The City is Thriving (Again)
“I’m ready to hibernate for autumn,” I told a group of strangers, tying our shoelaces after a peacefully intense gong bath in celebration of the autumn equinox a few weeks ago. In truth however, my hibernation has yet to start because life is zooming full-steam ahead. The city, with all its camaraderie and fire, is finally flourishing again after what we are now tenderly calling ‘The Great Pause’.
Looking back on my 28 years of living, I’ve felt a strong pull towards cities: a childhood in Brighton; regular trips to London; four years in Hong Kong. That sensation of being alone in a crowd, of feeling anonymous existing amongst masses of humans, leaves me — perhaps paradoxically — feeling energised and sociable. Whoever or whatever flows nearby immerses me in opportunity, allowing me endless possibilities to create a version of myself, one persona today and another tomorrow. I feel so incredibly alive in a city, hungry to live for every minute, eager to explore every tiny pocket that makes up the beautiful complicated maze. Never do I feel more free than pounding buzzy streets, people-watching with fascination, or returning time and again to the same bar for an after-work beverage.
I missed city life over the last few years. Gone were the days of what defined living in a city: Pret lunches and expensive Americanos; night buses and transport delays; new cultural pop-ups and (annoyingly) two events on the same day. Essentially during The Great Pause, I was paying a heck of a lot of money to sit inside my cosy apartment and miss out on many minutes of cityness.
Reports on the throngs of people leaving the city for the suburbs have indicated the death of the city is perhaps near, but these last six months have proven that the city will not fade (at least for now). City life is back, alive and kicking. The (slow) reopening of the world combined with the warmest year on record made the city buzzing with prospects again.
There were some teething issues of course: I don’t think any of us were certainly sure that our planned trips and scheduled fun would go ahead after so much uncertainty. And then when things did start happening, my loved ones and I were scheduling weekends in advance because everyone — literally everyone — had so many places to go and so many people to see.
At first it felt alien to engage in small talk yet I soon realised that everyone was starved of connection: David, the driver of my night bus, explained why he was abandoning his beloved job; Alex, my nail artist, tenderly shared her journey to fall pregnant; Chloe, my hairdresser, simply wanted to vent about the frustrating process of acquiring a mortgage. And by frequenting a rotation of coffee houses, it has been a constant conversation starter after I say “Alice… like wonderland” when the barista asks for my name, simply because I am so tired of being called “Alex”.
There was the unsurprising surprise of the dire tardiness of trains, where on one occasion a rail strike caused me to take the three-hour National Express coach to London for a gig I had booked tickets for back in February, and on another led me to be stranded in London for two extra hours because every time a new train to Brighton was displayed on the live departures it was just as quickly cancelled.
Flights were no better: our week in Spain was extended by a day due to a last-minute easyJet flight cancellation, and the strict travel rules around Covid in the US meant my trip to Boston seemed a distant reality until my negative PCR test result landed in my inbox only four hours before take-off. I moaned, but secretly I loved seeing the trains and planes full again, as well as the traffic — once a fury to us all — slowing down the roads. All that mess simply means life in the city has returned.
As we collectively get our bearings on society, I grapple with the reason why I felt a great sense of ageing over the last couple of years. I had been so intensely worried that life was passing me by, and it was this summer I finally understood why: I missed the city. I craved novelty and I needed chaos. I actively seek out cities because they make me feel young. I feel shiny and peppy and incoherent in a city, thrilled with the fun for adventure and the hum of community. Young people live in cities; older people move to the suburbs. Young people fill transient houseshares; older people create private residences. Sweeping generalisations potentially, but then generalisations so often contain granules of truth. I’m starting to wonder if maybe these older-in-age but ‘young-at-heart’ people we hear about are those still residing in cities.
During The Great Pause, I was simply nostalgic for the city that once was. Now after so long, I’m no longer just an observer of a limp, half city; the city is full, and experience has reignited. I am existing inside it once again.
