Essey "Governments must ensure that their major..."

[Mariko]

Since we have learned to walk upright and live in communities the urbanization process started. Some of cities begun to thrive, others were fading gradually. And now according to modern statistics urban population is more than 50 % of Earth inhabitants and constantly growing. Is it really necessary to finance major cities for government due to preserve nation traditions? As in many cases there are several pros and cons in the claim and the reason, stated above.

 

First of all, let’s determine what the major cities of the nation are. As it first comes into mind, these are the capitals and the biggest cities of the country. And usually these main cities of the country have long and interesting history. All of them are usually breathing with lives of last generations, their architecture is a mixture of modern and ancient styles, and their streets are keeping steps of the most famous people from the past centuries. In large cities there are a lot of place of interests, which usually serve as a “brand” of the nation. For example, such places of interest are Red Square and Kremlin in Moscow, Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, the Trafalgar Square, Big Ben and the Buckingham Palace in London. As these places are the concentrated expression of the nation history, so the cities are the biggest centers of the nation culture. That was “pro” the reason.

 

On the other hand, let’s explore the “cons” arguments. Being large centers of the nation history and incorporating the most well-known places of interests, cities attract tourist for visiting, students for studying and merely people for working from many different countries. Therefore, almost all large cities similar to New York are as “big apples” with strong mixture of nationalities, religions and cultures. Therefore, a nation culture in a big city gets blurred and vanishing in global multinational clew.

 

Museums that store pieces of arts, streets – all that things are the prints of the past, artificial keeperes of traditions. However, the culture is living and breathing and can not exist among dead parts. Culture and traditions are alive only within and with the people. Large cities due to their people generate their own modern urban culture. And hence, large cities of all nations are similar in many things (similar rhythm and content of life, as Saturday visiting a bar or night clubs for example, similar architecture as skyscrapers and business centers, etc.) Therefore, the nation roots and nation traditions are in villages as well, in small towns untouched with the wind of globalization. Only in small towns people still keep clothes, furniture and house wares of their ancestors not as the elements of vintage style, but because they really use these things and often in the same way as their ancestors did.

 

This argumentation inclines me to refute the idea, that the cities play a pivotal role in national culture and traditions preserving. On the contrary, they are the main generators of new urban culture that has nothing common with the traditions of a particular nation. Therefore, regarding the reason of nation culture support I disagree that the cities must be provided with the financial support as main cultural centers. Or, in other words, I would rather shift the accents in the claim: big cities need financial support as they are the most popular places for visiting in the country, they are the “face” of the country, but not the heart where nation culture is kept.