“I’d rather be provocative than right,” Cicero once said. This site is dedicated to provocation more than to truth. Expect dodgy arguments and flying leaps to unsound conclusions. The thesis is that the city is the natural and necessary wellspring of civilization, and any argument or example that advances that thesis will be seized on eagerly.
For most of the history of civilization, the city has been the center of human aspiration, and the fountain from which culture flowed to the rest of the world.
But in this peculiar age, when the world has been turned upside-down, too many of us have abandoned the city for the soulless identical suburbs, where culture is a shopping mall. The word “urban” has come to mean squalid, crime-ridden, unhealthy. It’s most often coupled with “decay” or “problems.” At least that’s the way suburbanites think of the city.
Urbane is devoted to squashing those myths about city life, and restoring the city to its real preeminence as the center of civilization–a word that means nothing more than life in cities. Although Urbane chronicles Pittsburgh in particular, it’s really about the idea of the city itself. That idea is universal; Pittsburgh is only one expression of it. But Pittsburgh is a good sample of it. The cosmopolitan (“world-city”) gathering of all nations; the swarms of musicians, artists, and intellectuals; the constant activity and unlimited opportunity: these are the things that make a real city. In spite of what suburbanites might think, Pittsburgh has them all.