Mark Twain penned a famous line more than a century ago neatly distilling the distinct cultures of the three largest cities in the American Northeast. “In Boston,” he wrote, “they ask, ‘How much does he know?’ In New York, ‘How much is he worth?’ In Philadelphia, ‘Who were his parents?’”
Boston has been, since its earliest days, a city of higher education, New York a city of financial might, and Philadelphia a city of historical lineage. To this day – Twain wrote this in 1899 – much about his assessment still holds. We often joke about what these cultural legacies mean for ourselves (Chicagoans are so sensible, Angelenos so flaky, people in Salt Lake City so self-reliant). But it turns out there is in fact plenty of truth to the notion that the places where we live influence how we view the world and our role in it.
