Concrete jungle were dreams are made of: 30 City memes for people with big dreams living in a big city

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• City people develop a walk. Everyone who lives on a walkable city knows that, and develops that. It's not just a pace, it's a whole system. The weave, the read of the sidewalk two blocks ahead, the instinctive lane change, the subtle shoulder drop that communicates to everyone in the immediate vicinity that you are moving through and you need the left side right now. Tourists don't have the walk yet. Groups of tourists walking side by side across the full width of the pavement are a force of nature that must be navigated around rather than through. City people know this. City people have accepted this. City people have built extra minutes into their morning specifically for this.

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• City people develop a sixth sense that can't be taught, only earned. They never look at the ground but somehow never step in anything. They know exactly which block is fine to have their phone out and which one it goes back in the pocket without thinking about it. They beat Google Maps to the destination every single time because Google Maps doesn't know about the cut-through behind the building on 5th, or that the second entrance to the station skips the whole line, or that this particular light takes forty-five seconds and if you cross now you catch the next three in a row. The city gave them that. It took a while and it cost something, but it gave them that.

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• A two hour walk is nothing. That needs to be said clearly for anyone who doesn't live in a city and finds that sentence alarming. Two hours on foot is a commute, a errand run, a Saturday afternoon, a way to get from one neighborhood to another while also getting coffee and stopping at that place you've been meaning to check out. City legs are real. The ability to cover ground on foot without thinking about it is a skill that develops quietly over months of not owning a car and needing to get places anyway

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• And yet, the city delivers. It delivers in the way only a place with this much density and this much happening can. The corner you walk past every day that suddenly has the best food you've ever eaten. The park that appears between buildings like a secret. The 11pm energy of streets that are still full and lit and completely alive. The feeling, specific to cities, of being anonymous and connected at the same time.

  The overpriced square footage was always worth it. The slow walkers are just part of the deal.

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