Grant McCracken has a lovely little essay on the supposedly disparate effects that suburbs and cities have on ambition. He slings an image of city as launch pad, where volatile elements cause ambition to ignite. Then the reply:

By contrast, the suburb is the place that ideas and ideators are supposed to come to die. Softened by self indulgence, lulled into a sense of complacency, stupefied by good fortune, things coast to a stop. Before you know it, your career is a Cris Craft sitting at the end of the garden. Every so often you think, “we really should take that out for a spin.” And then you don’t, again today.

And then he wonders if there's any truth lurking in those conventional wisdoms. I think so. You?
.:link:.