MMM and NJB are very synergistic—I think there's a bunch of us NJB fans around here, but then ironically you still see people discussing their bigass trucks and SUVs, and how cities are so unaffordably expensive one could never possibly live there, and how cities are crime-ridden dens of scum and villainy... Still a long way to go.
I grew up a sheltered suburban kid and never "got" cities, they were always overwhelming and unpleasant to me, and then I moved to New York City for grad school. I still had a bit of a west coast attitude about the concrete jungle and feeling like I needed an escape to nature, but I did pretty quickly adapt to loving the transit and walkability. Still, I felt that NYC was a thing for me to tolerate for the duration of grad school and then bail out of so I could live somewhere "normal" where it was convenient to drive a car to the grocery store and all that nonsense. (<-blech).
As a musician, all the good work is concentrated in big cities, so I started to be converted to the idea of permanent city-living by
"The True Cost of Commuting" and
"Rent vs Buy: If You Have to Ask, You Should Probably Rent", and simultaneously,
this Hank Green video. If work is in the city, and living close to work is so much better for wellbeing, then acclimating to city life has a pretty damn high ROI.
Then I graduated and temporarily moved back in with my parents in suburbia. Right around then I found NJB, and the snowball of my urban radicalization began its tumble down the mountain. Oh the Urbanity, City Beautiful, and CityNerd give me a healthy dose of optimism about the American/Canadian cities that are doing it right so I don't just fall into the NJB trap of idealizing Europe/the Netherlands. Lots of the comparisons of Dutch cities from the '70s to now give me a lot of optimism that I'll live to see some massive potential realized in cities like NYC, SF, and Portland... even if the sun belt continues to double down on their dystopian vision of a world built for cars.
I've been traveling a lot for gigs and auditions over the couple years, and as someone who's not a big travel junky, being able to really critique cities as I explore them has made it a lot more fun for me. I can have loads of fun just walking around a city all day for free... well, for the cost of a cappuccino at a nice coffee shop (;
Anyway, the point of this being that Mustachianism (not just frugality, but happiness, eco-friendliness, the beauty of bikes, and building your "urban tribe") is extremely compatible with urbanism. Having read MMM was a huge part of what made me see the light of urbanism, and being into urbanism helps me reframe MMM into what living
my best life looks like, in a career field that demands urban density to concentrate talented artists and interested audiences in one place.
