Large cities are like a neuroscience experiment. There are so many parts and pieces that exist for a particular reason and all have a hand in the make up of a major, metropolitan area. This area has this and is made up of these types of people and that’s where this type of thing happens. Over there you have people who do this, live this way, and there are typical and untypical things that happen for reasons no one can explain. Here you have a hub where everything that happens must be coordinated and approved. Here is the work center, and over here is the play center. And there’s the bad part… Don’t go there.
In the places I’ve explored in life, some of these parts of town are clear as day. They start and end with very visible borders and markers. Sometimes it’s an area. Other times, it’s a street or set of city blocks. No matter where you go, you find these things. Borders within borders within borders and so on. The social breakdown of this idea never ceases to amaze me. One portion of Hastings Street has an amusement park, another has one of the highest drug problems in the lower mainland, and another portion has one of the most expensive, upper class neighborhoods in the city with the financial district next door. It’s socially, psychologically nuts.