Like why do I feel like I’m supposed to be able to name the seven boroughs? I can’t tell you anything about L.A., Chicago, Boston, etc.
Edit: to clarify: I mean that everyone in America are expected to know NYC. Not just New Yorkers. Obviously everyone should know the layout of where they live.
And that for Americans, who have a hard time to locate even their own home town on a map.
Forget for a second that your original premise is basically completely wrong… You realize how fucking massive the USA is right? Based on the smugness I have to assume you’re European. The USA is effectively the same size as your whole continent. The country is the size of your continent. Let that sink in. And unlike the Continent of Europe… Much of the middle of the continent has no notable landmarks on many maps.
Most people can absolutely give you the general area they live if you put a map of the USA in front of them. They may be off by a bit, but that’s simply a function of how massive the scale of the map is you put in front of them.
For many, maybe even most Americans, NYC might as well be a fictional place. It’s featured heavily in countless movies, TV shows, books, etc. It’s more common than Westeros, Middle Earth, or Hogwarts. And people are expected to understand these settings, at least as much as NYC.
And that’s all before you consider places like Batman’s Gotham that is very clearly NYC.
your crazy. gotham is chicago on a good day and detroit on a bad day. metropolis is new york
Wait a minute, what?
I’ve been to a few cities all over Europe, lived in a couple of them for years, and I feel like having a general knowledge of the geography of where you live is a basic requirement of life.
Didn’t you play the “capital city game” with friends as a kid?
I mean, it’s cool with me if you or anyone has no idea of the layout of your local map, but that’s a surprise for sure.
My point is that people in the US are kind of expected to understand the layout of a city that they may never have been to or maybe only visited as a tourist.
It’s only the “local map” for like 8 million of us.
Where are you getting this impression? I’ve never gotten any sense that anyone outside the city is “expected” to know its geography. “Expected” how?
Also there are only 5 boroughs
The way the title is worded (“a city where people are expected…”) implies this is referring to people that live in NY. I’d clarify it by saying something like “the only city of which people from the rest of the country are expected to know…”
In Eastern Europe even the most illiterate citizen of a town/city knows the neighborhoods and where they are in relation to one another, if that’s what you’re asking.
