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THE BEST CITY TO LIVE by IRENE FERNÁNDEZ VALADÉS
There are plenty of wonderful cities, that have clare differences. It is obvious that because of their history, weather, traditions, resource etc. cities have developed in many different ways. Some of them have better political organization, some of them are prettier, better built… Today we are going to talk about the perfect city to live, according to our criteria. I am going to take the reference of one small city that no one knows. It is called Edimburgh of the Seven Seas, and it is situated on Tristan da Cunha, the most remote inhabited place on the planet. It is part of the British Overseas Territory of Santa Elena, Ascensión and Tristan da Cunha. Tristan is an archipelago with 4 main islands: Tristan da Cunha (the main and inhabited) Gough (where there is only one South African weather station with 6 operatives) Nightingale Inaccessible Island The archipelago is in the middle of the South Atlantic, and holds the Guinness World Record for the most remote inhabited place on the planet. The next closest inhabited place is the island of Santa Elena, 2400 km and without any connection to Tristan. The next closest point is Ciudad del Cabo in South Africa at 2,800 km. South America is more than 3,300 km. There is no airport in Tristan da Cunha as the terrain makes it impossible to land. The only way to get to the main island is by boat. There are three types of ships that pass through there:
- Tourist cruises from Argentina that visit the island, normally passing through Antarctica. (1 or 2 a year)
- Fishing Boats
- The Agulhas, a ship that only passes once a year, and which South Africa gave them in exchange for being allowed to use the island of Gough as a weather station. In total, only about 9 boats pass each year, most fishing with only 12 beds. The boats leave Ciudad del Cabo and the journey takes a minimum of 6 days. Although when the sea is rough it can take two weeks to arrive. Furthermore, the port is so small that ships have to anchor close to the island and send passengers on boats. The sea is usually fatal and you can only land 60 days a year, so it is most likely that when you arrive you will have to wait a few days for it to calm down.
Tristan da Cunha has an area of just 99 km², is surrounded by cliffs 600m high, and in the center has an active volcano of 2000m. There is only one small flat area where the city of 260 habitants is located. It is called, as we said, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, but the inhabitants simply call it "The Settlement". Almost all the inhabitants are descendants of the original settlers, so a lot of inbreeding occurs and they all have the same seven last names: Glass, Swain, Green, Hagan, Rogers, Repetto and Lavarello. They all came in super curious ways. As expected due to the high level of inbreeding, the population has super high levels of diseases like asthma and glaucoma. They say that 30-40% of the inhabitants have asthma. Also, there are no colds on the island. Coronavirus has not arrived to the island. In fact, they closed the borders because their inhabitants are much more sensitive since they are not immunized against almost anything (the flu for example is very dangerous for them). History: The archipelago was discovered by a Portuguese explorer named Tristão da Cunha. This man, during his trip around the world, passed near the island, but could not step on land because the sea was rough, but he named the island with his name anyways. During the following 300 years many countries tried to get hold of the island, including England, France, Holland, Austria, USA... but the terrain was so steep and the access so difficult that in the end they all ended up giving up. At first this was temporary, but one of these men (a Scotsman named William Glass) thought that Tristan was very charming, so he convinced his commander to let him settle there indefinitely with his family and 4 more men. William and his men settled down, brought pigs and goats, and signed a kind of "constitution" in 1817. To avoid there being men superior or richer than others, they all had the same amount of cattle and land, and in difficult times they shared it everything. But William was the only one who had taken his wife and daughters, the rest were single men. Nine years later an Englishman named Thomas Swain appeared on the island, decided to stay, and said they needed women. So Thomas sent one of the men to Saint Helena to find women interested in helping them populate Tristan. He promised that he would marry one of them and that he would give her a bag of potatoes for every woman he brought. He returned the following year with 5 volunteers. Thomas married the first one to set foot on earth. Soon the 6 couples already had 22 children in total. And the population continued to grow. Random people started to arrive: First two Americans from a whaling ship who surrendered to the charms of the island. Later a Dutchman to whom the boat had sunk over there (Pieter Groen, they changed the name to Peter Green which was easier).
Society: In Tristan they speak English. But it is a curious dialect, as it includes 19th century English expressions, with sounds and expressions from Italian, Dutch, Afrikaans and American English. Each inhabitant speaks it in a different way - some sound Italian, others sound South African... and expressions are heard that are not typical of England. Some are understood perfectly and others are not understood anything. When it comes to food, everything on this island comes in those 9 or 10 ships that come each year, so as you can imagine it is impossible to bring anything fresh from other places (hence the lobster they sell canned). So they are all farmers. Each family has its own garden where they grow many things, but especially potatoes. You already know that potatoes are very valuable on this island seeing what they have come to buy with them. When the weather is fine, the men go fishing. Women often work in the factory canning lobsters. Everything they cannot grow or fish (see flour, canned food, etc.) they have to buy at the island's supermarket. The supermarket has to order everything months in advance to be brought on the boats. There is no bakery on the island, so they bring frozen bread. Although many people buy flour and do it at home. Also, nowadays, penguin eggs are still part of their normal diet. Everything they want to buy they have to bring it in charge of South Africa (or go find it) including clothing, furniture, appliances ... among that, and they do not handle much money (because they do not need it to survive), they only buy the essentials. In Tristan, the internet was the first to arrive, in 1998. There were only 64 Kbps of telephone and satellite connection, so in 2006 they installed an antenna to improve it and since then they have a 3 Mbps public connection (they can only send emails with low-quality photos), shared among the 260 inhabitants and accessible only from the island's internet café. Television did not come to the island until 2001 and the landlines in the houses appeared with the installation of the new antenna in 2007. Of course, there are no mobiles or coverage. To move there you must have written consent from each and every one of the inhabitants of the island. They also have a school for students up to 16 years old, with a computer room, built in 1975 (until then you had to go outside to study. Of course, there is no university); a swimming pool and a tennis court; For them the tourist, "attraction" of the island is the crater of the volcano, with 2062 m, because inside there is a heart-shaped lake.
There is also a hospital on the island with its ambulance, although they have never had to use the siren. But on the island there are no doctors, there are only 2 or 3 nurses. The doctors and the rest of the nurses have to be brought in from outside, and they stay from 6 months to 2 years. The same for school teachers. Normally there are 2 doctors on the island who make 12-hour guards, so they try to have complementary specialties to cover all kinds of emergencies. For everything that is not extremely urgent, you have to go by boat to Ciudad del Cabo. This includes births. Pregnant women are sent to South Africa to give birth, because there is nothing a pregnant woman likes more than spending 10 days on a fishing boat A dentist also comes once a year to spend a few days, and an ophthalmologist every two years to check on everyone. One of the main sources of income for Tristan da Cunha is stamps. Of course, on the island there is a post office, which also acts as a tourist office and a town cafeteria. They also have a meeting and events center, where they celebrate absolutely everything, and where the only pub on the island is located: "The Albatross". There you can try the island's local beer, the "Island Brew", made with native berries that are found next to the volcano. In Tristan there is also a museum. It's called "The Thatched House", and it's a traditional island cottage built with volcanic rock. The interior is made of wood salvaged from shipwrecks. For £ 50/night you can sleep at a local's house, and they serve you 3 meals a day and do your laundry. You can also stay in a guest house and have food brought to you. And if you want you can sleep there one night. Since there are so few people and they all know each other they use the island's website as a bulletin board, and there they warn (their relatives who live outside) when someone is born, turns birthday, dies, home or going to study abroad. There are not many births on the island (according to the plank there are 1 a year or so), and not many deaths either, so when someone dies they close the pub, lower the flag at half-staff and cancel the workday. There are three cemeteries, and there is the grave of William Glass, which they take great care of. Once the tombstone was broken and they wrote an entire story telling how they had arranged it with Plexiglas. When someone dies, they make a wake in the hospital, and they transfer him in the police land rover. The women go through all the houses collecting flowers to make crowns and put them on the grave.
Of course, it is the most remote in the world and they have no opponents, so they have to divide and play with each other. There is no crime on the island, and when there are problems they usually come from people who visit Tristan by yacht. In a 2010 article, the island police said that he had not arrested anyone in 22 years. They have a single bed dungeon, which they have not used since the 1970s when two fishermen fought with knives. The skin color of the inhabitants is somewhat varied. This is mainly because the women who came from Santa Elena in the 19th century were black. The climate in Tristan is mild. Short and cloudy summers, long, humid and also cloudy winters. It is quite windy and temperatures are usually between 10-20 ° C, with highs of 25 ° C and lows of 8 ° C. The activities they do every day depend on how the weather is. In conclusion: I am going to analyze Edimburgh of the Seven Seas, and think which aspects I think are very acceptable and which ones I would change. I want to make clear that the perfect city does not exist, but this city has some really admirable things we should introduce to other cities. First of all, I find their constitution very interesting. They all live equally, with very simple things. The fields are fair enough, they don’t know envy or theft. That is a very good characteristic. Besides, what I find more relevant is the fact that they know all, and they trust each other. It is so curious that locks are not a thing on the island, they just know no one is going to enter to their houses. They have the heritage so well cared, they don’t receive so many tourism, but the enough quantity to make trips over the island. That is perfect, because they avoid problems with the autochthonous species, noises or pollution. Reducing the visits they save their space so that it lasts more in time. I think that Tristan da Cunha is a place that, despite being behind in many aspects, we should take as an example in many others. How many modern cities and towns could be this self-sufficient? A practically isolated town, where everyone knows you, but where you can grow and fish your own food, where there are no rich or poor and where everything is shared and celebrated. The location is a point in favor. If you want a quiet and not problematic place to live, it has to be way too far from other places. Something that I admire so much is that they don’t even have mobiles or connection. And that’s amazing, they live their lives
without any worries. Of course they know what is going on with the rest of the world because of the internet café, but it’s not the same in my opinion. The climate is not that bad, the only thing that bothers me more is that they have so many rainy days per year. But it is good enough for the fields, so in another hand it is positive. There are some aspects that I do not agree with. The first one is the endogamy. I would really like to live in a place where there are not many people, but it is a problem if inbreeding is the only solution they found. I think I would like to add more people to the town, so the population can thrive better. One more negative thing is the illnesses issue. It is really important that people’s immune system grow strong, and that’s only possible if they have disease such as flu, because if they travel to another country we have checked before that they die because of that. Although I am glad they don’t have coronavirus on the island, which is wonderful. The volcano is another problem. It is true that it was active only one time since they came to the island, but still, it is very dangerous and risky to stay in a place like that. I feel very necessary to form the children, so they can have a good cultural level. It should exist at least a scholarship for the ones that want to study at the university in another country. I will not say that they should have their own university because that’s not viable. Also, it is preferable to have at least one doctor on the island all the time, and plan births or operations without going out, because there are extreme cases in where you can’t wait for it. And they should have at least a ship ready to go out on the island, in case of emergency. They can’t wait for the foreigner ships to rescue them in case the volcano explodes again. That should be mandatory. A good city doesn’t have to be the most advanced one. A good city has to cover all the necessities the citizens have. The other things are simply whims, and unnecessary. That’s the reason why I admire so much the Tristones, because they don’t need too much to live, and they are probably way happier than us. All the cities have a bad and good history behind, that is part of the life. But with that, it is important to choose correctly to go on, and not stagnate. They came back to the island because they realize the world outside it was not that satisfying, and in a nutshell, it was a frivolity. I always hear people talking about how amazing is New York City, for example, and I think “would I be happy there?”. That’s what scares the most. Recently I realized that, because of the social media and the technology, lots of us are wasting our lives. I
