In Florida, you can feel your brain turning to mush
Each time I try to negotiate the ice-covered sidewalks of my neighborhood, I wonder again why I didn’t stay longer in Florida. Why did I return to Silver Spring, Maryland six days before the snow-and-sleet storm hit, turning the DC suburbs into a frozen moonscape?
Ah, the Airbnb Larry and I were renting in the heart of Sarasota! Situated on a short street of restored single-story houses, one could walk to everything from there – a boutique wine store, a cute movie theater, the Saturday farmer’s market, even the seafront, where pelicans kept diving into the water, seemingly just to regale onlookers.
We had been to Sarasota before. In 2021, we spent 3 winter months there, escaping the stifling lockdowns of the pandemic back north. Florida’s sunny weather meant that we could go about life freely – walk along the beach, bicycle while a blizzard enveloped Maryland, even dine without worry of infection at restaurants, since most evenings were warm enough to sit outside. All around us, skeptical Floridians, high on MAGA, took enormous risks – such as squeezing into crowded bars without masks. But they were easy enough to avoid, and their refusal to take precautions had the undeniably welcome effect of making the streets and sidewalks and restaurants look more normal, lively.
Sarasota was a very easy town to live in – little traffic, pristine supermarkets, gorgeous scenery. We took long walks along the water’s edge, drove to nearby towns like St. Petersburg and Fort Myers, cooked spontaneous meals using the fresh citrus and tropical fruit available. Towards the end of our stay, we started wondering if this was a place for us to settle in. Had prices not risen so dramatically due to the pandemic-induced buying spree, we might have even purchased a home there.
Instead, we went back the following winter for another three-month stay (this was 2022, when I could still teach remotely due to the pandemic). The pelicans were just as adorable, the produce just as fresh, the natives again as mask-free. Somehow, though, this second visit didn’t jell. I started feeling cut off from my regular life back home, from the energy and variety of the DC metropolitan area. Sarasota was too pleasant, too limited, too sleepy. “Some days I can actually feel my brain turning to mush,” I complained to Larry.
We were hoping this January that the city would feel energizing again after our four-year absence. The first week went well, but by the start of the second week, I started feeling the same sense of being cut off. Everything was sunny, yes, but in a remote, unpeopled, Chirico kind of way. We’d done all the walks and seen all the sights – repeating them felt too scripted. We’d wake up and not know what to do with ourselves – there was no expectation left of serendipitous discovery. Should we go watch the pelicans dive for fish yet once more? At least they had a purpose in life.
One might argue that we were only there for two weeks – just how many options did we need? There might not be the same number of museums and theaters and movies and restaurants as in the DC area, but surely there were enough for our stay? And it wasn’t as if we were such mavens of activity back home either, gobbling down every movie or play or art show we heard of, lining up for every new restaurant or bar or club that opened, doing something fun and exciting every evening.
But here’s the difference. In Washington, even though I don’t actually partake of most of its offerings, I feel heartened by the possibilities that surround me. The city is big and regenerative enough that if I wanted, I could find a new corner to explore, or a new show to watch, or a new dish to sample every night. I find great comfort in this fact – that I’m never going to feel stifled, that there will always be scores of new experiences waiting out there, that I will never run out of city. It’s reassuring to be a speck in something so vast and encompassing.
Perhaps this is only to be expected, given that I grew up in the heart of India’s busiest metropolis, Bombay. There were always people around us in the crowded apartment we shared. Our balcony overlooked a busy intersection which had a constant stream of pedestrians, bullock carts, scooters, cars, taxis and double-decker buses passing through. Which meant there was also ever-present smoke and dirt and most of all, noise. Years later, on visits there, I’d try to telephone Larry back in Maryland, and he’d be able to make out almost nothing, except for the blaring horns downstairs.
For the first twenty years of my life, I craved the crowds, I needed the noise, I even found the smell of traffic exhaust reassuring. Coming to the US in 1979, where I spent my first week at an American family’s house in suburban Pittsburgh, was a shock. The streets were orderly, the houses surrounded by manicured green, the bus drivers polite and smiling. Indoors, everything was clean, color-coordinated and unsettlingly quiet.
Fortunately, my university was in the city proper, and though Pittsburgh was a lot smaller than Bombay, it had enough going on to satisfy my need for possibilities. I grew to love it, just like I did the DC area when I moved to Silver Spring some years later. It’s true neither Pittsburgh nor Washington could compete with Bombay in terms of size, but by now my needs had evolved. Bombay – called Mumbai now – was suddenly too big to handle. Yes, I’d have my occasional “madeleine” moment there, but it was usually triggered by the bus exhaust I was inhaling.
Who knows? Sarasota might become an attractive alternative as well in some years. Once the winters in Maryland have become too unbearable, once my need for possibilities has diminished, once (God forbid) brain mushiness has begun to truly settle in. There’s probably a city of just the right size for every stage in one’s life.
Let me end with some mathematical insight into city size and social possibilities. Researchers have found that as a city grows, social connections and networking increase “superlinearly.” This means that if the population of the city doubles, the number of social possibilities doesn’t just double proportionally, but gets multiplied by a factor greater than 2 (generally between 2.2 and 2.3). The same is true for such characteristics as income, innovation, and (unfortunately) crime and traffic.
On the other hand, characteristics related to infrastructure grow “sublinearly,” i.e. by a factor less than 2 (generally between 1.7 and 1.8). This is an advantage, because it means that large cities get more efficient as they grow – they consume less power than proportionality would require, use fewer gas stations, need fewer cable lines and pipes.
The overall recommendation that arises from such economies of scale? Live in large cities! They’re more sustainable. One more reason for us to keep shoveling snow in the DC area for a while.
