Tag: culturalneutrality

Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Las Vegas: Authentically Unauthentic

~ Mark

When you visit New York City, you worry about whether you are being a tourist, about whether you are doing as the locals do. Same with visiting Paris, Rome, London. But in Las Vegas, everybody is a tourist. Anybody who’s not a tourist works in the tourism/hospitality industry. There is no real thing. It’s fake all the way to the bottom. The very idea of a sprawling, water guzzling city that sits in the middle of barren desert is too absurd to take seriously.

See also Richard Thompson & Communicatrix on cultural neutrality.
Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Las Vegas: Authentically Unauthentic

~ Mark

Where I live is culturally neutral. If I lived in New Orleans I’d have to embrace the local culture because it’s so good. In California you can be your own person.

Richard Thompson, in the Financial Times.

communicatrix:

After listening to an interesting interview with Richard Florida on the “personal economics” of location, I’m not sure this is 100% why I feel so comfortable in L.A. I suspect it’s more a perfect stew of things—the autonomy/anonymity provided by a large metropolis, the proximity to likeminded souls, the insane cultural diversity and, hey, let’s not forget about the exceptional quality of Western light. But yeah, Chicago? Seattle? Portland? (Which would be a strong contender, except for that pesky light thing.) All distinctive. And maybe a little oppressive, because of it.

Warrants thought, anyway. Or maybe I’m just nuts, and really like thinking about shit like this.

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“Cultural neutrality” is just the phrase I’ve been looking for. It’s one of the reasons Atlanta has really grown on me as I’ve been able to compare it to other cities.