SOC 200 Week 15 Blog Entry: Urban/Suburban/Rural Life

I've lived in urban, suburban, and rural areas.  I moved around a lot when I was a kid.  When I lived in rural areas people seemed to be more outgoing and welcoming/hospitable.  People were definitely more trusting and open.  I lived in a town called Smithsburg, Maryland for about 3 years, which is on the outskirts of Hagerstown.  Very small community with a population just barely over a thousand if you include all the farmers and amish peoples in the hills in that area.  The downtown was 2 cross-streets with one stoplight.  Main St. intersected by Water St. each street was about 2 miles long with historic looking row-homes and small shops lining them on both sides.  The most famous spot in town was the little Dixie Eatery close by the town's baptist church.  Their version of a population center was the towns small firehouse, where they would host town meetings and hold small get-togethers.  A girlfriend of mine in my freshmen year of highschool actually held her birthday party there, where they had a DJ from Baltimore city come all the way out to Smithsburg and play music a lot of the adult crowd there got confused over.  Many of them made remarks like "what is this noise?", and "they call this music?"  It was kind of comedic in a way, how out of touch they were with main forms of entertainment in urban areas.  Urban areas where the majority of the U.S. population resides in the 21st century.


Anyways, I also lived in Frederick MD which would classify as a DC or Baltimore suburb, as well as Ashburn VA which is one of DC's largest and wealthiest suburbs.  The music the DJ was playing at my ex-girlfriend's party would not have confused the kids or adults in these more urban settings.  The people are a lot more in touch, and from my experience, more educated academically.  They are a lot more "street smart" and not as open or trusting as the more "naive" crowd in the hills of western MD.  City centers here are huge and supported by the state govt. tremendously.  Many people commute to and from work, where-as in the rural settings people worked close-by on farms, doing landscaping, working in small shops or lumberyards, or commuting to a close by city where more commercialized work was available.  There were also many similarities as well though, so its not just contrast.