College: Urban vs. Rural

When you do college research, you typically stumble upon what kind of environment the campus is in. Take, for instance, Northwest. Many college-search sites consider Maryville rural (which is accurate). UMKC, however, is considered urban (which is also accurate). But why is this a factor in choosing a college?

In the long run, it really won't make a difference as to whether or not you graduated from a college in a bustling city, or from one that you could see cows right next to campus. But there are always benefits to both, such as...
1. Urban areas are filled with jobs - and a variety of jobs. In a rural area, you have the option of working fast food or grocery. Oh, and maybe a clothing store if you're lucky.
2. Rural areas aren't particularly busy, and it's easy to walk to campus from anywhere off campus. You'd need a car to get to an inner-city campus (unless, obviously, you're close to it).

My preference would, very obviously, be an urban setting. I would love the cultural exposure, the abundance and variety of jobs, and the sort of anonymity one gets from being in a large city.

Which setting would you prefer if money wasn't a factor, and you could get into any school you wanted to?

Art and Music: A Must-Have

To me, it is absolutely necessary to live in a city that exposes me to the arts - preferably the performing arts, but I'm not picky. This kind of cultural exposure is also necessary for the development of a healthy and creative mind - something people normally don't think about.

It all started when I was fourteen, and I was starting to get into several high-end Broadway musicals. Today, I intend on working with the theatre program of the college I end up in, possibly performing in plays, and working backstage as much as possible.

In my first post, I mentioned how my high school did one show every other year, while I hear about some suburban Kansas City schools putting on at least one to two musicals per year, along with multiple plays. Many people are used to this fact. I find it degrading to those who appreciate the arts.

The best cities for cultural exposure in the US include (but are not limited to)...
New York
Los Angeles
Chicago
Seattle
Las Vegas (weird, right?)
San Francisco

while many other cities have large theatres downtown that touring casts of Broadway shows can perform in!

The video above is the Opening Number for the 2009 Tony Awards. Rock of Ages is not a real musical, nor will it ever be, so I'm glad the lead singer was hit in the face by the giant marquis (if you watch closely, you can see it).

A Cure for Urban Decay

In the late 20th Century, many major US cities had witnessed gross decay and decreases in population. Their crime rates skyrocketed, and the educational system went down the gutter. By the late 90s, it seemed as if there was little hope left for cities like Chicago and Los Angeles.

I found a ten-year-old article explaining this whole issue. Lately, I have been reading about how cities are beginning to prosper once again, so the article was slightly shocking to read. Then I read into how the author thought that cities would prosper again. The most interesting thing was that these ideas had been used in the past ten years, and they have been working in places such as Seattle and San Francisco.

Had one visited Seattle in the mid-90s, many of the piers would have shown signs of aging. There is still a pier that the city chose not to renovate to present an example of how gross the city used to look; it's chipped paint galore. Today, Seattle's waterfront is beautiful with modern architecture - a foreground to a beautiful skyline.

(In the front left corner of the photo is my favorite restaurant in Seattle, Anthony's at Pier 66. Best seafood ever.)

Need A Little Green Space?

I was thinking the other night about living in Seattle (as I often daydream about), and came to the conclusion that I am a very nature-loving person, and that's what makes Seattle the best place for me. Here's why:

1. Seattle is ridiculously liberal. I've been discouraged to move there by a few conservative friends just because of it. This also contributes to the green-ness of the city. Many ordinances have been passed to keep emissions low and greener activities high.
2. There are trees everywhere. When I visited Seattle, I was shocked to find that, in Pioneer Square (in the middle of Downtown), there's basically a forest. These trees may have been planted to keep people dry from the perpetual rain, but nonetheless, they keep the air nice and clean, which brings us to...
3. I don't get a respiratory infection by taking a few breaths. I had a sore throat and a cough related to the traffic and generally bad environment of the large city (it was worth it!). Seattle, however, smells like rural Missouri. The air is so clean there. I love it.

So I began to wonder if an abundance of parks was a huge factor when considering migrating to an urban area. Parks offer a sense of separation from the bustling city and a calming connection wtih nature.

Take, for instance, Central Park in New York. It's massive. There are 8 million people in New York, all of whom most likely need to escape their everyday muggings (DISCLAIMER: Central Park is actually the site of many rapes per year). I figured that if I ever found the money to live in Manhattan, I would visit Central Park everyday for a nice run.

If you were to ever move to any city, would parks and green space be a huge factor in your consideration? Why or why not?

I know it would be for me.

A New Field of Medical Interest

As I was strolling along merrily throughout the blog-o-sphere and the interwebs, I was blessed to find an interesting article on health in urban areas. This took particular interest to me, since I never really considered there being a different branch of medicine for different populations (e.g. urban vs. rural).

The article in interest was called Urban Health: A New Discipline and basically reviewed the unhealthy side of living in an urban area (despite an abundance of hospitals), like respiratory problems or HIV (and no, it did not say that living in an urban area entitled you to acquire HIV).

Check out the article here!

HIV Prevalence in Cities

I was surfing around the web, and stumbled upon this article:

HIV Still Plagues the US

I had no idea that 1 in 30 adults in Washington, DC had HIV, or that 1 in 10 sexually active homosexual or bisexual men in New York have it. These statistics are alarming (and I guess that depends on the % error and the exaggeration of the report in Newsweek).

For some reason, there still seems to be a connection between major US cities (particularly the east coast) and HIV Prevalence. I believe that this is the time to refer back to my last post and think about the sexual education system in the US. I did not have sex ed in high school - my teacher was Catholic, and he decided that it wasn't that important. Currently, there are two or three pregnancies at MHS (which is a lot for such a small school).

Inner-city kids have it worse. The public education system finds it unnecessary to teach teenagers the risks of having unprotected sex. Then they resort to telling them that abstinence is the only way, and nothing else works (which is all lies, as you should know). But the worst thing about being an inner-city kid (Particularly in New York) is that since HIV is just so prevalent. And since the teens aren't given proper resources or information, many of them will become infected.

It's a scary thought, but it does happen.

Of the drawbacks of living in an urban area, this may be at the top of the list, depending on how you view the "controversial" topic of sex.