Washington D.C. Is Not a Popularity Contest
29th September 2024
In 2009 Paul Graham wrote a thoughtful essay titled “Cities and Ambition.” There he proposes that a great city is defined by the sort of ambitions it kindles—or perhaps more accurately, the sort of ambitious it gathers.
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When I discussed this essay on Twitter many of my followers took issue with Graham’s premise. Millions of human beings call a city like New York, San Francisco, or London home. The dreams of these millions cannot be shrunk down to one prestige occupation. Folks in Los Angeles were particularly resistant: the Angeleno who works in law or shipping resents when his city is reduced to its most vapid industry.
These objections are obviously true yet somewhat irrelevant to Graham’s larger point: Every city has its own aspirational ideal, and this ideal influences who a city holds in high honor. Packed as they are with so many millions, large cities contain almost every kind of ambition—but not every city will esteem each ambition equally. “Professors in New York and the Bay area are second class citizens,” Graham comments, “till they start hedge funds or startups respectively.”2 Likewise, in Cambridge the financier and the founder will be held in high esteem—but less esteem than the scientist or the scholar.