Читать книгу Anglo-American Cultural Studies - Jody Skinner - Страница 18

What’s interesting is of course subjective; what’s “most American” is even more challenging to describe. Perhaps you might want to answer the question in what seems like an easier way: based on population. But here too there are problems: should we take the population of the city within the city limits or the metropolitan area including suburbssuburbs or the metropolitan statistical area? The top three on all lists are the same: New YorkNew York, Los AngelesLos Angeles, and ChicagoChicago. Numbers four to ten of the top ten will vary if you consider just the population within the city (left column) or if you consider the metropolitan area (right column). With 2014 estimates of the last 2010 censuscensus figures the US has ten cities with population of more than a million, the very ten cities listed below in the left column.

top ten largest cities in population
	cities	metropolitan areas
1st	New YorkNew York	New YorkNew York
2nd	Los AngelesLos Angeles	Los AngelesLos Angeles
3rd	ChicagoChicago	ChicagoChicago
4th	HoustonHouston	Dallas-DallasFort Worth
5th	PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia	HoustonHouston
6th	PhoenixPhoenix	PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia
7th	San Antonio	Washington DCWashington DC
8th	San DiegoSan Diego	MiamiMiami
9th	DallasDallas	AtlantaAtlanta
10th	San JoseSan Jose	BostonBoston

DetroitDetroit or DestroitOne very notable city that fell in population and off the list above is DetroitDetroit, an example of a city located in the Rust BeltRust Belt (we’ll mention this again in just a bit) with its symbolic name MotownMotown linking it both to music and to motors, Detroit being the headquarters of the Big ThreeBig Three automobile manufacturers ChryslerChrysler, Ford, and General MotorsGeneral Motors. Detroit could also represent the future of American cities with projects devoted to the greening of the city – turning old city blocks into gardens. Detroit as a symbol of AmericaAmerica’s [15]urban past could become a symbol of a hopeful American urban future now having survived bankruptcy. Or will Detroit remain Destroit, a slang term for the destroyed abandoned city, a heartbreaking example of urban decay? We’ll be “discovering” another Detroit connection between the Old and the New WorldNew Worlds a bit later in American history.

the most American city?If you’ve visited many American cities, you’ve probably noticed the lack of a center, common in most GermanGerman or British cities, and you’ve no doubt noticed that downtown business areas, which are organized on a grid pattern, are strictly separated from residential areas in the suburbssuburbs, which often have winding streets. You may have been surprised by the European character of just a few American cities not found in the top ten above based on population: BostonBoston and San FranciscoSan Francisco. You would certainly have been astonished by the ethnic variety of New YorkNew York or the wide boulevards and elegant memorials and shopping mallsshopping malls of Washington DCWashington DC surrounded by areas of shockingly visible poverty. Maybe you wondered where Los AngelesLos Angeles begins and ends if you drove down one of the freeways with their unending stretches of numbingly similar single family houses. You most certainly would have missed the availability of public transport in most cities with a population of less than a million or maybe have enjoyed the luxury of some light rail connections in some of the environmentally friendlier cities like PortlandPortland, OregonOregon, or SeattleSeattle, Washington. Otherwise American cities seem to have been built for automobiles rather than for pedestrians. And with the widespread popularity of shopping malls with chain stores and huge parking lots, very many American cities have no distinct look in the way that some British and many European cities do. Thus if you’ve only visited the most popular tourist cities, you probably won’t be able to easily describe the most “American” city. But trying to find the most “American” city is very important to companies testing new products. One city not found on the lists above and probably not on any tourist’s must-see list but often used by testers as the typical American city is ColumbusColumbus, OhioOhio. According to more recent research, AmericaAmerica’s new ideal test city is AlbanyAlbany, New YorkYork, another city which is supposed to mirror the American population but isn’t on the itinerary of many tourists. The two cities at the very bottom of the typically American list are at the very top of all tourists’ lists: San Francisco and New York!