From The University Bookman: On Brooklyn’s Side.

many agrarian or regionalist (the two are often unfortunately conflated) polemics often neglect the notion of vocation, or rather they universalize the notion of vocation to mean only a back-to-the-land kind of reaction. . .

Brooklyn fits even less the New York stereotype. My family, for example, has lived here for four generations, mostly in the same neighborhood. My wife’s family has been across the river in Manhattan just as long, though perhaps I should add that part of her family hails from the South and bore the CSA standard for the state of Georgia. I need not shop at a superstore, preferring instead the many family-run businesses in my neighborhood. We buy produce directly from farmers, do not need to drive a car for weeks at a stretch, and we live within five miles of where my grandparents were married and my ancestors are buried. This is not some “crunchy con” fantasy. Oppressive congestion, dirty subways, and rude pedestrians aside, this is Brooklyn, too.

For more thoughts on the same subject, see Rebecca Tirrell Talbot’s Curator article on urban simplicity from February 27.

agrarianism brooklyn Cities New York City simplicity urbanism