Welcome to the Listening Time podcast. Hey everybody! I’m Conner and you’re listening to Episode 37 of the Listening Time podcast.

I hope you’re all doing well. If this is your first time here with us, let me just explain a little bit about how it works. So, the Listening Time podcast is made for English learners who want to practice their listening skills. So, in each episode, I choose a different topic to talk about. And then, I just speak about it naturally with no script. I don’t read anything. I just say things as they come to my mind. And I speak in a natural way, using natural words and expressions, but I speak a little bit more slowly and a little bit more clearly than the average native speaker speaks. In this way, you can understand me better and you can practice your listening skills and learn new vocabulary as you’re listening.

And with each episode, you have the transcript available, so you can read along. In English, when we use the phrase “read along”, this just means that you’re reading as you listen. You’re reading while you’re listening. So, you can read along while you’re listening, and you can use that transcript to help you understand the words that I’m saying… any new words or phrases that I introduce, and it can just help you understand me better. So of course, if you need that, just access it there in the Episode Notes.

So, in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about living in a big city. So, this is a relevant topic because I’m sure many of you live in big cities. And so, we’ll talk a little bit about some of the positives, some of the negatives, and hopefully it will be an interesting topic for all of you today. And of course, remember to share this podcast with anyone who might find it useful. Please help it grow, and help out other English learners that would benefit from this resource to help their listening skills. Alright, let’s get started.

Okay, so first of all, let me mention some of the big cities that I’ve lived in in my life. So, right now, I live in Tijuana, which has 2.1 million people in the metro area. So, when we reference the “metro area”, or the population of the metro area of a city, we’re talking about the city and all of the surrounding cities that kind of make up that city. In English, we can use the phrase “make up” in this way, to say that some smaller parts create a whole. So, there are some smaller cities that are considered to be part of the big city that is nearby, right.

So, here in Tijuana, in the metropolitan area, there are 2.1 million people. And of course, I spent most of my life in San Diego. And there, there are 3.3 million people in the metropolitan area. And I spent the last few years in Guadalajara… Guadalajara, Mexico. And in this metro area, there are over 5 million people. And then the biggest city that I’ve lived in, by far, is Los Angeles. When we say “by far” in English, we’re saying that it is the biggest by a lot, right. We’re saying that it’s not a close competition. This one is definitely in first place. So, Los Angeles is by far the biggest city I’ve lived in. And in Los Angeles, in the metropolitan area, there are over 13.2 million people. This is an enormous city. This is a very big city.

So, let’s talk a little bit about growing up in a big city. I didn’t necessarily grow up in the middle of a big city, but I grew up in residential areas, very close to big cities. And so I kind of consider that I grew up in big cities. So, there are some positives and negatives to growing up in big cities. I remember that when I was younger, I used to watch movies and see children growing up in small towns and it always looked like they had really amazing childhoods and I was actually a little bit jealous. But I think that in reality, many kids that grow up in smaller towns, they probably envied me. You know, I grew up in a big city, and they probably wish they did too. So, in English when we use the word “envy”… I said “they envied me”… T=this just means that you are jealous of someone. Right. You want what they have. So, I’m sure many people would’ve envied my life growing up in a big city. But at the same time, I looked at the childhoods of these other kids who grew up in small towns, and I was a little bit envious of them.

So, I think that there are positives and negatives about both, but it’s oftentimes easier to see the positives about the other side. In English, we use the phrase, “the grass is always greener on the other side”. It just means that the the thing that you don’t have, the thing that the other person has, or the other option, looks more appealing than your option. Right. So the word “appealing” means attractive, right. That other option looks appealing… that means that the other option looks attractive. So, growing up in a big city means that you have a lot of activities. I did a lot of things when I was young. I played a lot of sports. I went to a lot of different places. I actually had a lot of fun as a kid, I think. So, I didn’t really have any need to envy other children. But of course, in the movies, they make it look very romantic, and so I did anyway. But yeah, I had a lot of fun activities to do and places to go to. So, that was really cool.

But one of the big problems is that I needed my parents to drive me everywhere, right. Of course, I didn’t have any other way of getting around, and so I had to ask my mom to give me a ride. In English, when we say “getting around”, “to get around”, we just mean to move around a city. So of course, if you grow up in a big city, it’s hard to get around and go to all the places that you want to go, all the different activities, and so your parents have to drive you. And I remember that this was very annoying. I remember that my friends and I had to take turns asking our parents drive us to different places. And it wasn’t the best, right. Of course, in other countries, you might have more public transportation or other things like that. But still, many parents don’t want their children taking public transportation alone, or they still want to drive them to these different places. So, I think that’s a very common experience for kids who grow up in big cities.

And some of the negatives of growing up in a big city are that you don’t really have as much nature, right. You don’t have, you know, mountains and forest nearby. And so, you have city and houses and cars, and so that also means that not as many kids play outside. So that’s another negative. I played outside, and I was fortunate enough to live on a street that wasn’t very busy. And so I was able to play a little bit in the street, but we always had to be careful and we always had to make sure that there weren’t cars going by, and so it wasn’t as easy as when you grow up in a small town and there aren’t a lot of cars and you’re free to move around everywhere. So, it’s a little bit of a different experience.

So, let’s talk about some opportunities that people have living in the big city. Of course, job opportunities is the big one. Many people have to move to big cities in order to find a job. Of course, some industries don’t require you to do this. But for many industries, you need to move to a big city if you want to have an opportunity to find a job or to grow in your career. One important note: notice that I didn’t say “grow up” in your career. I said “grow” in your career. This is an error I hear all the time. All of my students say this. They say “grow up in my career”. We don’t say this in English. “Grow up” is only used for children becoming adults. So, if you’re talking about your career, we just say “grow” or “move up”. You can say grow or you can say move up.

So, of course, if you want to move up in your career, it’s oftentimes necessary to be in a big city. Also, for studying, it’s also convenient to be in a big city, because you probably have multiple options for universities or technical schools or things like that. And so, for example, in the US, if you grow up in a small town and you want to go to college, you probably have to move away from your small town and go to a bigger city to have opportunities to study at a university. So, that’s another opportunity that you might move to a big city for.

And now, let’s talk about the conveniences of living in a big city. So, of course there are stores everywhere. There are malls. There are all kinds of places that you might need, and there are a lot of services available. So, if you live in a small town, you might not have all the same access to services. But in a big city, if you need someone to repair an appliance, for example, you probably have a ton of options, right. You can just do a simple search for people around you and find a ton of different options and choose which one you like the best, right. So, that’s one of the conveniences of living in a big city.

And for me, one of the other great things is that you have a lot of restaurants. I really like going to restaurants, and I really like having a lot of different options for restaurants. And so for me, that’s one of the best parts about living in a big city… is that you have access to all these different options for cuisines from all around the world. In English, when we use the word “cuisine”, we’re just referring to a type of food… for example, Chinese cuisine, Italian cuisine, etc. So, the plethora of restaurants is one of my favorite things about living in a big city. The word “plethora” just means a huge number of something.

So, I like that in my city, there are a plethora of restaurants. And one other thing that could be good in big cities, depending on the country, is transportation. So, you could have access to good public transportation if you live in big cities. In the US, not so much. We don’t really pay much attention to public transportation. We just drive everywhere. So, that doesn’t really apply. But in other countries, this is usually true. The bigger the city, the better the transportation.

So, now some inconveniences about living in a big city. I think the biggest one is the traffic. I think that all of you who live in big cities, you all know what I’m talking about. The traffic is oftentimes really awful in big cities, and this can really change the quality of your life. It can change your routine. Many people have to spend two hours or more every day sitting in traffic. And of course, that makes a big difference in your life. Imagine having to spend two, two and a half hours in traffic if you live in a big city versus spending almost no time in traffic in a small city or a small town. Of course, you’re going to have a different type of day. You’ll probably have to get an earlier start if you live in a big city, and you come home later, and you probably waste more time. So, traffic is a huge inconvenience when it comes to living in a big city.

And another thing that we sometimes forget is that the air quality in big cities is usually much worse. Right. Because there’s so much traffic, so much movement, obviously there’s more air pollution, and the air quality oftentimes suffers because of that. And so, depending on where you live, you might even be able to see this poor air quality. If you leave the city and see it from a distance, you might even see the bad air over it. And so, this is also an inconvenience about living in big cities.

Another inconvenience is having little space, right. There are more people in a smaller amount of space, so that means that each of us has a small amount of space for ourselves. So, this is very different if you live in a small town or in the countryside. You feel like you have a lot of space, right. You have a lot of room to move around. But in cities, in big cities, you oftentimes feel a little bit suffocated. It feels like there’s so many people. You don’t have a lot of space. The apartments can oftentimes be small, and there just isn’t a lot of room for everyone. So, that’s another inconvenience.

And also the prices… so, if you live in a big city, you’ll probably have to pay more for your everyday life, your normal expenses, your rent, everything than if you live in a smaller city or a small town. If you live in a smaller place, a smaller city, you probably pay much less. So, this is another inconvenience about living in big cities. And lastly, in my opinion, it seems like there is more bureaucracy in big cities, right. “Bureaucracy” just refers to a lot of procedures and processes that are complicated that you have to do to just finish or do basic things. Right.

So, a lot of things related to the government, but other things as well. I feel like in big cities, the bureaucracy is even worse. It takes a long time to do things, and it’s very annoying. So, in my opinion, that’s another negative thing about living in a big city. So overall, there are positives and there are negatives about living in big cities. You might prefer living in a big city or you might hate living in big cities. This really just depends on your taste, because there are both positives and there are negatives when it comes to this topic.

Alright, we’ll stop there for today. So hopefully, this episode was interesting for you. And hopefully it was good practice for your listening skills. Of course, if you need the transcript, you can access that in the Episode Notes. So, just scroll down there and click on that link. Thank you for continuing to listen and tune in every week to these episodes. I really appreciate that. And I hope it’s really benefiting you. And so thank you for listening to this episode, and I hope you’ll come back for Episode 38 of the Listening Time podcast.