Essay examples and structures

Seattle: A City of Community

America is often characterized as an individualistic or an individually oriented society, rather than a group-oriented society. However, even within the American nation itself, there are distinctions to be made on a city-to-city and a coast-to-coast basis between essentially group-oriented and individually oriented societies. Seattle is perhaps the most notable example of the former, a truly group-oriented society.

Seattle is one of the most recently famous cities in America today. It is a West Coast city, but not a city that is involved in the movie industry. But Seattle became one of the founding places for a new wave of American culture, particularly the new wave of 'grunge' or alternative music that swept the nation during the 1990's despite this. It also came to represent a new expansive and community-based ethos of environmentalism and caring business practices. Music, environmentalism, and coffee all became connected in the community-based culture of Seattle.

One of the reasons for the development of this ethos, and one of its primary defining characteristics of Seattle, was its community-based social life. Most cities are characterized by an individualistic. In so many cities, one can wander the streets in a crowd and yet be completely alone. Most cities are not defined by common communal meeting places, where people can meet and chat about their daily lives as people in small towns used to a hundred years ago. Instead of the front porch, in most cities living quarters are best defined by 'the apartment,' a place which, although it is in close proximity to other units, is often singular and allows its occupant complete privacy and isolation when the door is shut. In cities people can dine alone, ride the apartments alone in silence. The ability to ignore the person next to you and to not make eye contact is considered to be one of defining characteristics of how to live in a city. But even in the suburbs, things are becoming more individually focused. The car is perhaps the paradigmatic form of isolating transport, isolating people of different economic groups and different professions. People do not come together to play sports or even go to the movies together, to discuss community affairs. Instead, people rent films and live in isolated units.

Seattle in contrast to all of these developments, developed into a city based around coffeehouses for its social and artistic culture. Music grew out of these urban 'meeting places' where the focus was not on work or production, but the generation of ties and the exchange of ideas. Coffeehouses are places where individuals exchange ideas over endless cups of coffee, all the while listening to new music by local artists, rather than listening to commercial music on CDs. This sense of locality increases the sense of communality amongst inhabitants and residents of particular neighborhoods within a city.

Even Seattle's commercial industry is noted for its friendliness. Starbucks coffee is perhaps the most famous product of the city. Starbucks is credited today with introducing a revolution in America's suburban malls and fast food eating establishments, making them places to meet and commune with other individuals, rather than simply grab a cup of joe and run. Starbucks provided a franchised version of a European sidewalk cafe. In Seattle, individuals were more apt to sit in open areas to engage in conversation, rather than congregate in smoky corners of bars to sit and chat privately, or to go to people's houses to engage in isolation with individuals they already knew from work. This openness of exchange allows for a freer flow of artistic exchange and creativity, and also creates a greater sense of engagement with the community and a greater sense of responsibility to the community.

Perhaps this is one reason why Seattle is known as one of the most environmentally friendly cities in the entire United States. Part of this distinction is no doubt rooted in the city's beauty, but perhaps it is also linked to the greater sense of responsibility individuals have to something larger than themselves and their immediate family and place of work. Environmentalism by its very nature is not about the individual. Environmentalism is about the individual's responsibility to make a quality life for everyone else living on the planet, and for future generations.