What is the real city spirit?
The famous passage in Sister Carrie, an American writer, which describes the negative influence of cities on young people, often appears in domestic translation textbooks. When a 18-year-old girl runs away from home, there are often two endings, one is to meet a helper to make her life better, the other is to get in touch with various moral concepts and then become degenerate. Big cities have their own attractive tricks, no less than those men and women who teach people to be bad. Of course, people are much smaller and more human than society. This urban discourse is reminiscent of what the Italian novelist Calvino said: A city, like a dream, is made up of longing and fear. As a person who was born and raised in the countryside and later worked and lived in the city, the author also has mixed feelings about giving up the city. Big cities are symbols of the modern world. There are billions of people living in cities in the world today. Cities not only affect people's lives, but also their world outlook. Especially in developing countries, cities have undoubtedly become a window of opportunity for people, especially young people, a paradise for social interaction and a center of creativity. The best things, whether universities, buildings, products, restaurants, advertising companies, are all in the city. People often come to the city to pursue a new life experience, which is related to personal life experience, such as going to school, working, starting a business, making friends, or simply taking risks. Even a few days of city experience will bring changes to our lives and even become a turning point in our lives. Whenever we come back to this city again, even the occasional news of this city may bring back old memories. Whether we live in big cities, rural areas or small towns, cities are an unavoidable existence, which affects our lives because it promotes different lifestyles. We may have been to many places and are eager to visit world-famous metropolises. Is there any difference between your city or the city you are familiar with and other cities? Does this city have a unique spirit? Tsinghua University's professor of political philosophy from Montreal, Betanin, and the head of the sociology department of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Avina? The Spirit of the City, co-authored by De Charette, examines nine world-famous cities and their unique spirit in political, cultural and economic life. These cities have their own characteristics, which are most obviously reflected in the aspects of architecture, history, industrial composition, population structure and geographical environment, such as highly professional cities such as Jerusalem and Oxford, and more diversified metropolises such as Paris and new york. The core view put forward by the author is that rediscovering the spirit of a city is an important task of philosophy and sociology, and emphasizes the importance of a city having a unique spirit that can and will bear the pressure of globalization. Globalization has a positive side, that is, openness and tolerance, but it may lead to the homogenization tendency of cultural convergence. They put forward a new word different from patriotism. As we all know, belonging is the basic need of human beings, but nationalism is often extremely destructive. Unlike countries with armies, cities do not go to war when they emphasize uniqueness or compete with other cities. Citizens' pride in the spirit of the city will help stimulate their sense of identity and help curb the spread of nationalist sentiment. For urban planners, urban managers or ordinary citizens, what they are most concerned about may be how to find the unique spirit of the city. The author thinks it depends on the specific situation and existing resources of the city. If a city is poor and its people are deprived of the most basic material needs, then the primary task of the city is to get rid of poverty, give people basic medical security and avoid malnutrition, instead of talking about the unique urban spirit.