When it comes to choosing a neighborhood to live in, or if you have grown up in a specific neighborhood in a specific city, people often wonder if their neighborhood, or the city, has shaped who they are and what they have become. A neighborhood provides experiences which do shape a person’s way of thinking. A person who has grown up in New York City will be used to the hustle and the bustle, as well as having access to public transportation, such as buses, taxis, and subways. They will also be used to having access to parks, theaters, and other conveniences located nearby. A person growing up in Alaska will have a vastly different experience. As of 2017, Alaska had nearly 740,000 people, 40.5% of which live in Anchorage. Juneau, the capital, and Fairbanks both have a population of a little over 30,000 people. The populations of other towns after those three dramatically drop to 10k people or less. Akutan, Alaska is on Akutan Island in the Aleutian Islands and has a population of 1030 people as of 2018. Chetopa, Kansas has a similar population. They both have one grocery store, but if they need a supermarket, residents of Chetopa only need to drive 25 miles, there aren’t any other settlements on Akutan Island, which is 17 miles in length east to west and 12 miles in length north and south.
Individuals living on Akutan Island would have to learn how to fish, hunt and learn how to survive on the island, as would people in other parts of Alaska. They would have to learn what to do if they are stranded, what to do if there is a blizzard, how to hunt, fish, and other tips for survival, as well as learning other forms of transportation. If the person from New York City moved to Akutan, they would have to get used to a completely different lifestyle and learn those skills very quickly. A person from Akutan would initially be overwhelmed by the activity and the seeming chaos of New York City and would have to learn how to navigate the city, as well as sidewalk etiquette, and how to stay safe in the city. It all depends on the person. Person 1 from Akutan (P1A) may actually love living in a village on a small island and has lived there their whole lives. P2A may be a sibling of P1A and may want something more in life, but settles for living in Akutan as they had grown up there and that is all they have ever known.
P3A could be another sibling in the same family and while they may have loved growing up in Akutan, they may decide that it isn’t for them and don’t want to settle as P2A has. They could decide to move elsewhere in Alaska, possibly to Anchorage due to the size, or they may decide to go elsewhere in the country, or they could move to New York City. P1NYC may be like P1A and love living in a major city and would never consider living. P2NYC could be like P2A and may actually be dissatisfied with living in NYC, but the pace of life prevents them from realizing that fact. P3NYC might be like P3A and realize they don’t care for New York City, even though they have lived there their whole life, and make the conscious choice to move to Akutan as they love the idea of living in such a place. The only difference is that they would be living in a place which suits them better from the beginning.
Each person will have different experiences if they grew up somewhere else, but it ultimately depends on the person and their choices. Another example could be a person who has grown up in the Midwest. They may be used to the cold and the snow during the winter and the strong thunderstorms, heat, or even tornadoes in the summer. They may grow up with people who have grown up in the area who have the mentality of “That’s just the way it is” and as adults they would either incorporate that into themselves and have the same attitude, come to despise the snow, thunderstorms and tornado risk, but do nothing to remove themselves from the area, or decide that they aren’t going to put up with the snow and the tornadoes and make a conscious decision to move someplace warmer where there is a lesser risk of tornadoes, such as Arizona, or the western portion of Washington, depending on how much rain they like. P3A and P3NYC would be the same people if they switched places, but would be far happier from the start, but better suited for the area where they grew up. Should the suburbs be mandated to rewrite zoning laws and allow a fair share of affordable housing?
Absolutely. There are fears among suburbanites that poor people from the inner cities will bring crime and drugs with them when they move. That is a ridiculous assumption as there are plenty of suburban areas which have crime and criminals as well as drug users. Clive, Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines may have only 11.5% of the total crime rate that Des Moines has, but it still has crime. The suburb of Clive actually has 1.8 times more murders than Des Moines does at 11 murders per 100 thousand people, whereas Des Moines has 6 murders per 100 thousand people. The population of Clive, Iowa is estimated to be at 17,200 in 2018, while the population of Des Moines is estimated to be at 646,000 as of 2017. That being said, suburbs should absolutely be mandated to rewrite zoning laws to allow a fair share of affordable housing. While rural areas are cheaper for obvious reasons, there should be affordable housing in most places to begin with, not just small centralized pockets in inner cities.
A recent study has shown that public transportation could be the key to escape for those living in poverty. Owning a vehicle is expensive. Car owners have to deal with gas prices, car insurance payments, driver’s license fees, vehicle repair and maintenance expenses, tires are expensive, taxes, and registration fees. Not to mention that when they go to sell the car to get a new one, or trade it in for a newer one, the car’s worth has depreciated so much that it is pretty much worth nothing. For those living in poverty, since they can barely afford those things for their vehicle, they put off getting fuel for the car until they absolutely need to, and when they do they sometimes only put enough to last them until the next time they get paid, they put off getting new tires put on the car and wait until the last day to pay any fees, taxes, insurance payments. Not surprising when the average costs for car ownership were nearly $8.500 for the whole year in 2017. What would someone living in poverty do if their vehicle broke down, or simply couldn’t be used anymore? Get a ride, borrow someone else’s, or do without.
An economics professor at Harvard University by the name of Raj Chetty had found that the cities ranked as having the best public transportation also had the highest chances for a person from the bottom fifth to the top fifth of income. These cities include Boston, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C. Although, with San Francisco, anyone earning less than $111,000 is considered living in poverty. If a city has good public transportation, then people living in poverty don’t have to worry about paying an extra $8,500 a year for something that immediately loses value once it is driven away from the car dealership. That is an average of $8,500 that could be better spent on groceries, clothing, and finding a way to extricate themselves from the jaws of poverty. In conclusion, a person’s neighborhood can shape who they are, but it is also up to the person themselves how they decide to react to their neighborhood. For example, one person could grow up in a neighborhood with a high crime rate and gang violence and they could just accept that is the way things are around there and try to live their life as normally as possible.
A second person could grow up in the same neighborhood and decide that the choice is either between joining the people in the gangs or being like person one and just accepting it as what it is and they might decide to join the gang. A third person living in the same neighborhood as the other two might decide that they don’t want the neighborhood they love to be this way and take steps to change how things are. A fourth person living in that very same neighborhood could decide that they don’t have to put up with this sort of thing and they would decide to move elsewhere. However, the person who had decided to join the gang could decide later on to leave the gang and join the third person to ty to turn the neighborhood into a better place. A neighborhood has the potential shape who a person is, but who that person becomes is not set in stone. They can change who they are and their surroundings in an instant once they decide to do so.
