Your city sucks

The editors of Reply like give our readers a project to work on. For our inaugural look at the modern city, Reply asked our friends to tell us why their cities suck. The answers were honest, open and fun, if not terribly surprising.

Contributor Allie Piotrowski took us for a spin in Long Beach, telling us what makes her hometown so special. Read her contribution here.

PARIS, FRANCE
by Morgan Bourven

As I leave Paris for the holidays, I can’t help to wonder: how come living in the most beautiful city in the world can’t make people well-behaved and respectable? Without a doubt, the worst side of Paris – putting aside strikes and 1€ keychains of the Eiffel tower – is its inhabitants.

Arrogant, grumpy, rude….the Parisian character is not only a cliché, it’s almost a way of life. It even takes a good part in what is called the Paris syndrome, a psychological disorder encountered by some people visiting Paris, characterized by a delusional state.

However, the victims aren’t only tourists. Parisians hate their city, but despise the rest of France. Don’t dare say you come from the “province” (ie “not Paris”), or you’ll be seen as a sort of barbaric peasant. To be honest, it’s not the Parisian’s fault. Jacobinism, with a centralized Republic and all the powers concentrated in the capital, is at the root of France. From the Parisians to the elite, provincial cities are considered as places to go on holidays.

Thankfully, there are also the Parisiennes: elegant, seductive, and devastatingly irresistible.

Morgan Bourven is a Breton who moved to Paris in 2007. He’s currently studying journalism at the CFJ (Centre de formation des journalistes).

ANKARA, TURKEY
by Gözde Damla Citler

I was born and raised in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. Although Ankara is a rather silent and not-so-crowded city (compared to Istanbul), it is not administrated as well as it deserves. That is why the traffic sucks. There are far too much cars however there is not one well-working parking lot for people and no parking spots for the disabled whatsoever.

The climate is generous in Ankara, people can see all four seasons. Despite this fact, there aren’t enough green-spaces for people to go or for children to play. Ankara is an ever-growing city and there are nearly 4 million people living in. There are lots of universities and every single state-building is located in Ankara, being a capital city, this is the normal thing. However, there should be also entertainment arenas (and I am not talking about the shopping malls) for a city which has so many young population. There has not been a single gig or a show of a big group or a musician. Because there is no single place for them to perform. Recently, there has been a lot of gigs in Istanbul, every group or musician from Metallica to Leonard Cohen, from Linkin Park to Placebo performed; but none of them came to Ankara. The most important thing is there isn’t a stage for them nor a concert arena. And it is not that easy for everyone living in Ankara to go to Istanbul for so many times in 3 months just to see their favourite band or singer performing. It is not fair. Being so far away from entertainment business, Ankara has been mentioned as the “gray city” or the “city of bureaucrats” – because the only exciting thing going on in Ankara is the group meetings of the political parties in Grand National Assembly of Turkey.

You know the saying goes for New York: “The city that never sleeps.” It is the exact opposite for Ankara. The public transportation is so bad, you can’t find a single bus at night – including the weekends, from Kızılay (which is the main centre) to Bahcelievler or to anywhere else for that matter. Not everyone has cars nor they should have – public transportation is the most important thing for people to benefit from.

I have always wanted for Ankara to be a real capital city like London, Paris or Rome. It has the potential, it has the potential to be secure enough, live enough, wealthy enough, young enough and entertaining enough. Only if it was administrated as it deserves.

KARACHI, PAKISTAN
by Haider Arain

Karachi is the largest city, main seaport and the financial capital of Pakistan, and the capital of the province of Sindh. It is one of the largest cities in the world by population and the 20th largest metropolitan area in the world, in terms of metropolitan population. As one of the most rapidly growing cities in the world, Karachi faces challenges that are central to many developing metropolises including traffic congestion, pollution, poverty, corruption and street crimes.

These problems continue to earn Karachi low rankings in livability comparisons: The Economist ranked Karachi fourth least livable city amongst the 132 cities surveyed and Business Week ranked it 175 out of 215 in livability in 2007, down from 170 in 2006. Traffic problems and pollution are major challenges for Karachi. The level of air pollution is estimated to be 20 times higher than World Health Organization standards. Street and Organized crime is also another major issue, which is difficult to control because allegedly Karachi’s ruling party is the main supporter and organizer of crimes.

Haider Arain is a graduate in Computer Science and works as a Software Testing & Quality Assurance Engineer. He belongs to a feudal family and is a prominent member of his tribe. He is interested in world history and social sciences. He enjoys are hunting and traveling.

AUSTIN, TEXAS
by Andrew Roush

Don’t get me wrong. Reply’s hometown of Austin, Texas is great. Live music, strong local businesses, potent coffee and friendly people make for the perfect place to house a bustling community of creative young people, and that’s exactly where Austin excels. Where it sucks? The same place so many major American cities (including our other base of operations, Houston) suck: transportation.

When our local transit authority, Cap Metro, announced plans for a light rail system to bolster that city’s mediocre bus routes, we were intrigued. When the city finally fronted the cash and the will, we were thrilled. When we found out the light rail route was more or less solely designed to shuttle workers from the far-off exurb of Leander to the offices and high tech firms in central Austin, we were disappointed. It’s one thing to help commuters. It’s another to completely ignore the over 50,000 college students in Austin, the economically disadvantaged portions of east and southeast Austin, or the residents of poorer suburbs.

When Cap Metro finally broke ground, they included a portion of east Austin in their route, but it was the quickly gentrifying east Downtown, not the minority and student communities of places like the Riverside neighborhood. Worst of all, nearly a decade into the light rail row, the trains aren’t moving. Tracks have been set, trains given a shiny red livery, but a series of administrative cock-ups have kept the trains in the station.

New plans for something the city calls “Urban Rail” garnered $1 million from City Council in December 2009, with a proposed route much kinder to students and the traditional users of public transportation. With a record like Austin’s, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Andrew Roush is the editor-in-chief of Reply Magazine.