The death of “Small City America?”
It has become a tiresome cliché in political discussions to speak of the red state/blue state dichotomy. Digging a bit deeper, almost any thinking person will concede this is not a “state issue” or a “regional issue” as much as it is a “rural/urban issue.” However, even the rural vs. urban dichotomy is too simplistic for my tastes.
Growing up in the ’90s, I divided Americans into four general groups:
- Urban
- Rural
- Suburban
- Small City
Many would agree with 1-3, but adding the “small city” category was a product of growing up in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Contrary to what many uninformed Chicagoans think, Champaign is not Hicksville. Far from it; with a research university of 35,000 boasting a D-1 sports program, C-U is a pretty good place to live. But it’s not Chicago either, of course.
I used to think of places like Champaign-Urbana as deserving a category all their own. Based only on distance, C-U is not a suburb and will never be a suburb of Chicago—it is 2.5 hours away by car. But more than the mere distance factor, I used to think that small cities deserved their own category because their residents carried their own values, culture, and practices, distinct from that of suburbanites’. Small city people didn’t try to emulate the city, didn’t talk about the city, didn’t have (many) friends from the city, and didn’t know (much) about the city. This separated them from their suburban counterparts.
Today, after a recent trip to the Champaign’s shopping mall, I see far less of a difference between my childhood and a Chicago suburb than I used to.
As those of you know me personally might guess, the mall is not one of my haunts. On entering it this weekend, I had a bit of a shock. It looked just like a Chicago suburb. Just like one. And frankly, this made me kind of sad. It was filled not only with Univ. of Illinois students (usually from Chicago) and C-U high school students, but also high school students from neighboring rural areas. I don’t know if I was naïve to believe in some sanctity or separateness of Small City America, but it seems gone now.
The reason? I can only speculate, but I’ll pin everyone’s favorite target: the media. The oh-so effective marketing of Axe body spray and 50 Cent has washed away Small City America. Hot Topic and Hollister have pummeled it like a prizefighter. Aeropostale ruined the underdeveloped cultural anthropology theories of my childhood.
Am I wrong? Is there still a distinction? Was there ever a distinction, or was I kidding myself to think that “Small City America” existed as a worthwhile category? The other possibility here is that I’m just getting old and I can’t tell the difference between different groups of kids anymore. This is a real possibility.
…and do you notice they never ask anymore if it “plays in Peoria?” Doesn’t seem like a coincidence.