What is it like where you live?

[JustGeorge]

I live in a city of about 67,000 in Iowa(Midwest). Its an old industrial city, not terribly wealthy, fairly high crime rate, and definitely trashy. But, it has character, and produces characters.

Racial make up is 65.8% white, 17.8% black, 7.1% Latino, 4.5% Mixed race 2.9% Asian, 1% Pacific Islander, .2% Native American .3% Other

I couldn't find any statistics for religion, but there are Protestant churches of all types. Several Catholic churches. A mosque. There's a synagogue, but its very unclear on its status; it says its closed, yet the cars roll in every Friday evening... There's also a local atheist group that was actively recruiting. Not sure if they're still actively proselytizing; they stopped during Covid.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Religious and Linguistic demography of Delh:

Religions: Hinduism is Delhi's predominant religious faith, with 81.68% of Delhi's population, followed by Islam (12.86%), Sikhism (3.40%), Jainism (0.99%), Christianity (0.87%), and Buddhism (0.11%). Other minority religions include Zoroastrianism, Baháʼísm and Judaism.

Languages: According to the 50th report of the commissioner for linguistic minorities in India, which was submitted in 2014, Hindi is Delhi's most spoken language, with 80.94% speakers, followed by Punjabi (7.14%), Urdu (6.31%) and Bengali (1.50%). 4.11% of Delhites speak other languages. Hindi is also the official language of Delhi while Urdu and Punjabi have been declared as additional official languages.

Languages in NCT of Delhi (2011)
Hindi (81.27%), Punjabi (5.2%), Urdu (5.17%), Bhojpuri (1.35%), Bengali (1.29%), Maithili (0.73%), Haryanvi (0.67%), Tamil (0.53%), Malayalam (0.49%), Rajasthani (0.46%), Garhwali (0.43%), Gujarati (0.24%), Odia (0.23%), Nepali (0.22%), Kumaoni (0.19%), Sindhi (0.19%), Marathi (0.17%), Telugu (0.16%), Kashmiri (0.11%), Pahadi (0.09%), Awadhi (0.08%), Marwari (0.07%), Kannada (0.06%), Assamese (0.05%), Others (0.48%)

 

[Thomas]

The London Borough of Newham. An absolutely ghastly place.

My daughter lived there for a few years ... it's one of the suffering London boroughs, like Tower Hamlets.

Something another daughter pointed out:
In the UK hospitals have grouped under 'trusts' – so in my area we have Barnet General, The Royal Free, Chase Farm, North Middlesex.

Of those four, North Mid. is very definitely the poor relation, both service and infra-structure is not on a par with the others. Why? Probably various reasons, but one factor is the other three all have upper-middle-class, affluent residential areas within their local remit, which comes with certain expectations with regards to social services. The education and, more importantly, the influence of the affluent tells, whereas poor of North Mid is lower-middle and working class with poor housing, transient populations, and so on ...

I grew up in Kilburn, a North London suburb, which was much like Newham today. My street is now in a 'Preservation Area', which is a far cry from what it was when I was a kid.

 

[rocala]

Back in the 1990's I took a job in Hackney, which borders my borough to the north. One day, after work, I went to the station and was waiting for my train when a middle-aged woman sat nearby. She suddenly burst into tears. I went to help her, all that she said was that her employer had transferred her there the week before. In between sobs, she said that she did not know that places like this existed.
I knew what she meant. That same week, a woman was mugged in a busy supermarket by two women. Both of the women were carrying babies in their arms.

My father, not an easy man to please, used to socialise in the area in the 1950s, and enjoyed himself immensely. What a difference forty years can make.

 

[Craz]

Back in the 1990's I took a job in Hackney, which borders my borough to the north. One day, after work, I went to the station and was waiting for my train when a middle-aged woman sat nearby. She suddenly burst into tears. I went to help her, all that she said was that her employer had transferred her there the week before. In between sobs, she said that she did not know that places like this existed.
I knew what she meant. That same week, a woman was mugged in a busy supermarket by two women. Both of the women were carrying babies in their arms.

My father, not an easy man to please, used to socialise in the area in the 1950s, and enjoyed himself immensely. What a difference forty years can make.

Sorry to read that about how Hackney has deteriorated.
I was born there and lived there in the early 1950s and for the most part really enjoyed my early youth there.
One nice memory is that every Sunday morning a vendor would come along on a tricycle selling bagels( or rather bigals as they were called then)

 

[Aupmanyav]

Oh. There are many things that I remember from my childhood, like how the meat seller would come to our house and sell a cut that we wanted at the rate of Rs.1.25 (at current rate 1 cent) a kilogram (Now it is Rs. 800, $9.20 a kilogram). We lived in a vegetarian brahmin neighborhood, but people knew that Kashmiri brahmins are non-vegetarian. There were others too in the locality, one at a time was the Chief Minister of the State King. Every morning a street-cleaner would come with his mashaq (goat-skin water carrier) and flush the drains and the open areas which were stone-paved.

 

[wil]

In the US urban planning needs to include low income areas with bus traffic to the high economic zones. An area needs to have housing and markets that the lower income wage earners can live and still commute to empty the trash and do the nails and make the coffee for the rich and famous ...or hospital, or high rise office building...

Not seeing that change anytime soon.

 

[Ahanu]

I live in the Venice of the East - Bangkok (or, as Thais would say, Krung Thep, which could be translated as City of Angels or City of Divine Beings). The name itself provides insight into what it's like to live here. The city earned the title Venice of the East from its many winding canals and its main river, the Chao Phraya River. That's one reason why the roads here are crazy and seem to go all over the place in seemingly illogical patterns. You'll often see motorbikes zigzagging along the roads, weaving through traffic made up of trucks, tuk-tuks, Toyotas, and Chinese EVs.

In the early morning, you can smell the delicious aroma of street food filling the air. Sometimes the pollution is heavy, but luckily it hasn't been too bad lately. It's generally sunny, in fact, it's almost always sunny - you can even buy water spray at the local 7-Eleven to cool down. The Thai people here are very friendly and welcoming.

The census I found online lists a diverse population, but, when excluding the tourists, in my daily experience I would conclude the majority of the people I see that live here are Thai, Chinese, or a mixed Thai-Chinese heritage. However, this is mostly due to the specific area I live in within the city itself.

This mix of cultures contributes to the unique atmosphere of Bangkok. It has its own Indian neighborhood, for example, with a Sikh temple. I was intrigued by the great respect they have for their holy book. The city's mix of cultures is also reflected in its diversity of foods or the Thai language itself, which features a lot of words borrowed from Chinese, but some originated from Western countries too. Even Persians were present in the old capital (Ayutthaya) nearby, holding influential positions. The city was originally modeled after Ayutthaya under King Rama I.

Most Thais here follow Theravada Buddhism. You can often see Buddhist monks walking along the roads with alms bowls, sometimes even carrying their cell phones - a fascinating blend of tradition and modern life. When you walk by the temples, you can hear the peaceful sound of chanting. Shrines and Buddhist statues, with both Chinese and Thai flavors, can be found throughout the city.