Cities are warehouses for humanity that can't survive on it's own. When the collapse comes, and it will come, the cities die first. Ayn Rand had that 100% right.

As for the idea that cities are where things happen, it sounds like two apes arguing over how smart they each are. On the I.Q. scale of life, we out rank them both.

The secret of their prejudice can be found very near the beginning as they indicate that the only thing of value outside major cities are farms and they only exist (are tolerated???) is to supply cities with bread.

It's like listening to some poor soul telling himself how great he is.

Waste of electrons.

Reply to khalling: Chicago, Baghdad, or Moscow; Ed Snider, Bill Gates, or George Soros... In the sweep of things, we find virtues and vices where we do. Generally speaking, cities are the wellspring of civilization, just as capitalists are the engines of creation. Individually, they may measure up to our Objectivist standards for virtue and morality - and often do not.

In the "Discrimination" topic, khalling wrote:
"... cities also tend to pass more regulatory laws that keep immigrants from starting their own businesses out of a car on the street corner. What about Mayor Emmanuel telling Chick Fil A not to have stores in HIS tolerant urban center? . what's with the evil suburbia vs benevolent city reasoning? you can find bigotry anywhere-why do you think cities tend to fall out geographically by culture-chinatown to little havana? what about the moslems who killed the soldier right in the middle of a benevolent city city street in London? In suburbia it's just town. Have you spent much time in suburbia? Because I have lived in different suburban neighborhoods most of my adult life and this bigotry label you want to make by association I find to be highly inaccurate and somewhat insulting."

Be insulted if you wish, but growing up in suburbia as a teenager from the city, I had my fill of it, though granted that 30 years later, I found it comfortable and convenient when on a contract project for a year.

The key difference is that in the city, ethnic neighborhoods are stopping-off places where newcomers are acculturated. In the city, Polish is not Ukrainian, Slovenian is not Slovak, Lebanese is not Syrian. On the other hand, in the suburbs everyone is White and fleeing from "minorities": no one cares if you are Irish or Polish. In the city that mattered; in the suburbs it does not. In the burbs, color is the only salient metric.

Chinatowns are a consequence of a deeper racism. In the city, a German would easily buy his cigarettes at a shop owned by a Hungarian without a second thought; but there would be no reason to go into Chinatown unless you wanted something Chinese like firecrackers.

People are people, granted. People in cities are not saints. The downside, however, is real: sinners live in the suburbs; devils live in the country. By analogy, Christopher Hitchens pointed out often that good people do good deeds because of their religion - just as non-religious people do for other moral reasons; but if you want someone to do something horrible, that takes religion. So, too, can you find good and bad people everywhere; but if you want to get away with murder, the country is the place to do it.

Those lynching hillbillies did not carry out their heinous crimes in the largest of cities.

The plural of anecdote is not data. You can cite this or that, but the empirical, statistical facts are obvious by observation and broadly supported by data: cities are synonymous with civilization.