Navigator: Thank You, Next (Year)

Full disclosure: I have plagiarized the title for this edition of Navigator from the subject lines of two email party invites I received. That extremely representative sample size of two (plus all the end-of-the-year memes I’m seeing on Twitter) signal to me that many of us are eager to move on from 2018, much like Ariana Grande from her exes.

In any case, something I’d like to do before we slide into 2019 is to thank you for reading Navigator, and for writing to me about your experiences; it’s been really nice getting to know you.

In this edition, I’d like to highlight a few of the many lovely replies I’ve received this year:

Clickety Clack!: Are there objects, buildings, or other historical quirks in a city you’ve lived in that shape your memory of it?

“Providence, [Rhode Island], has some of the oldest sidewalk trees I've ever seen in a city… Their roots are now monstrous. Many have grown so big that the sidewalks above have burst upward into undulating hills, their red bricks splayed out like buck teeth.”

“Personally, I think that the ‘New York to Haiti’ line might actually depend on latitudinal lines, but only in the Western Hemisphere. See image. Whether or not Hawaii would be included largely depends on how many Mai Tais Mr. Derulo consumed on the day of the song’s conception.”

“I don't feel particularly strong ties to a city or state. The U.S. was always what I felt a tie to, and yet I had that feeling of being an immigrant, with my first memories and close family in another country.”

— Kevin (Lahore, Pakistan)

“Every experience made me closer to understanding who I'm and how I want to contribute to the world. Why? Because these experiences made me question my values and everything I believed in. They made me embrace and share the great things about my very misunderstood culture/country/territory (see: the history between Puerto Rico and the U.S.).”

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— María Mercedes Rodríguez (Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, U.S.)

Hometown Glory: Has living elsewhere changed your relationship to the city you grew up in?

“Over the past decade, every visit of mine to Chennai uncovers a new layer of its evolution from a conventional society to one that is now embracing the contemporary.”

What we’re taking in:

Bye bye, Bendel’s! (The New Yorker)¤ “… we stopped at Mau Summit and tasted oranges from Tanzania—so green, so sweet.” (Popula) ¤ Judging books (in art) by their covers. (Garage) ¤ “The idea of the ugly American city was probably conceived with whole chunks of Houston in mind.” (Catapult) ¤ Toledo decorates its Christmas weed. (Washington Post) ¤ “If you’ve ever been to China, you may wonder how and why such a sprawling country should exist in a single time zone. The answer is Mao.” (Lapham’s Quarterly) ¤ “… the line between “here” and “there” is unusually blurry for Zimbabweans.” (n + 1)¤ On building a tiny house for my Sims. (Kotaku)¤ A time capsule of 1930s New York. (New York Times)¤ “Unlike Chinatowns in San Francisco or New York, the “Little Saigon” areas of San Jose are not known as a tourist destination, not even in the Bay Area.” (Eater)¤

About the Author

Tanvi Misra is a staff writer for CityLab covering immigrant communities, housing, economic inequality, and culture. She also authors Navigator, a weekly newsletter for urban explorers (subscribe here). Her work also appears in The Atlantic, NPR, and BBC.

In southwest Connecticut, the gap between rich and poor is wider than anywhere else in the country. Invisible walls created by local zoning boards and the state government block affordable housing and, by extension, the people who need it.