“Ugly” cities are beautiful.

Omaha. Tacoma. Gary. Rockford. Green Bay. Boise. Cleveland. Detroit.

All — beautiful.

Many peo­ple think of these places as “armpits” or “hell­holes.” Either aes­thet­i­cally. Or cul­tur­ally. Or both.

However, these same peo­ple are fail­ing to real­ize the aes­thetic genius in “Negative Space.”

And by Negative Space I mean…

—Places that force them­selves on the land­scape;
—Places where the snow gets dirty; and
—Places that hold a chal­leng­ing aes­thetic appeal.

I’ll elab­o­rate.

Negative Space exists in:

—Places with vacant lots;
—Abandoned places, or, con­versely, over­crowded places;
—Polluted places. Back alleys;
—Places choked in smog; and
—Wide open places.

To fur­ther bela­bor the point, Negative Space is home in:

—Isolated places, des­o­late places. Unforgiving places, unsym­pa­thetic places;
—Places that smell like gaso­line, places that smell like oil. Places with grease, gun­fire and burn­ing tires; and
—Places that are too small, places that are too big.

And to really beat a dead horse, I’ll posit that Negative Space thrives in:

—Places where signs are bro­ken, places where lights are out and places where car alarms blare;
—Places that are grey, ashen and over­cast; and
—Places that are too cold….places that are too hot.

If you’ve been dumped by a loved one, a drunken binge in Beloit is just what the doc­tor ordered. Let every­one else have their scenic splen­dor. Their Eugenes, Olympias, Boulders and Missoulas. These are beau­ti­ful places in their own right, but they’re places that hold an easy beauty…an easy emotion.

Places that earn your affec­tion — the ones that don’t over­power you with aes­thetic grandeur — ulti­mately end up being the bet­ter friend. The friend with more depth, more lay­ers, more com­plex­ity. The friend with more soul.

So…

Let the com­fort­ing smog of SacTown caress your dam­aged psyche.

The Beiruit-ish look­ing ghet­tos of Milwaukee will be your shoul­der to cry on.

Darkness on the edge of Omaha = your guid­ing light.

And that weedy, aban­doned park­ing lot in Vancouver, Washington (the non-Canadian Vancouver, “the bor­ing Vancouver”) can be your per­sonal savior…

…if you would just let it.

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