Toulouse: The Seattle of Europe? Part 2

BUT!

Toulouse is not the only city referred to as ‘the Seattle of Europe’; in fact, if one were to take a deeper look at all of the places bearing that title, as one is about to, Toulouse would emerge relatively insignificant.

Remember me saying that a full 50% of the search results for ‘toulouse “the seattle of europe”‘ were actually about Norway? Turns out if you Google just “the seattle of europe” (double quotation marks needed, otherwise you’re served only flight offers) you get five different candidate cities in just the top ten hits. And if you click on the second hit, a site ironically called ‘seattlest’ though I doubt the creators meant that the way I’m reading it, you get a whole list of cities claiming to be the Seattles of their region, country, or continent. Some of them contradict each other, and Toulouse is not even to be found.

I won’t list those cities here; you can look at the site yourself if you’re that interested, but I will name certain contenders, as well as their reasons for being such, and hopefully it won’t be as time-consuming as the search for clarity concerning Toulouse.

Bergen, Norway is mentioned on several sites as being the Seattle of Europe for its heavy rainfall and general overcast-ness. Apparently the terms ‘City of Rain’ and ‘the Seattle of Europe’ are synonymous. I guess that would make sense, as Seattle is known as ‘the rainy city’. Does that make Bradford the Chicago of Europe? The UK is supposedly the windiest country in Europe, and Bradford is a pretty windy city, though apparently Newcastle dwellers purchase more anti-flatulence products. Nah, I’m not seriously trying to garner that title for Bradford, though as you’ll see in the next paragraph, it certainly wouldn’t be the most whimsical christening. But just before that – remember when I said the phrase ‘the Chicago of Europe’ sounds farcical? Apparently Mark Twain wouldn’t agree, as he used that precise description on Berlin, Germany, so I will of course defer to his opinion, though he admits the parallel does break down. Really I just wanted to get Bradford into this somehow.

One blogger has named Belgium the Seattle of Europe simply because it rains a lot there, and a few others have done the same with Amsterdam. The site I mentioned before that ‘may harm my computer’ says – going by the two-line description Google gives of search results – that Seattle “seems to be closer to Amsterdam than Toulouse”. I feel like this website contains all the answers to every question this post has raised and could ever raise, but I won’t see them because the site potentially contains malware. Typical.

We persist. A columnist calls modern Switzerland the Seattle of Europe, but fails to elaborate, unless it’s because of the ‘viable economy, no visibly poor, and “an amazing ability to reconcile modern technology and modern economics with traditional mores and the visible presence of the past”‘; in short, the ‘consummation of the bourgeois revolution’. I wouldn’t know. Any Seattle-ites willing to venture an opinion? I’d welcome it on any point of this two-part discursion.

Back in North America, Austin is called the Seattle of the south, Boston the Seattle of the east, Halifax the Seattle of Canada, Iowa the Seattle of hardcore, and Machinima the Seattle of media. Pity most of the links are now dead. I do know from The Classic Crime that Seattle has a big music scene; punk-rock according to them, but also jazz according to Doc Wiki.

France itself has several claimants to the throne other than Toulouse, such as Champagne, for reasons unknown, or Rennes, in which apparently it rains much also.

It’s interesting what you can learn about something by who or what is named or names itself after that thing, though one must always be wary of such secondhand information, the Christ being example par excellence. What’s also interesting is that this naming business brings to mind what the lecturer in my Australia class (yes, I have a class devoted solely to the entity that is Australia, but in the interest of keeping this parenthetical aside shorter than what I want to say about it, let’s save all that for another time) was talking about last week. When people move to a new place, especially one where they will live for a long time or even the rest of their lives, they give names to places and things based on where they’ve come from, to increase familiarity and make the new place home. Australia is rife with such examples, and perhaps there is some of that in all these ‘Seattles’ as well. Even if the people moving to Europe or the region in question are not from Seattle, they may be comforted by assigning their new home a somewhat familiar name. Or perhaps calling it that prior to moving makes it less intimidating a change. But I also think there’s more going on than just that.

Despite the smacking satisfaction of discovering something very similar to something previously known, and the accompanying temptation to call the new by the name of the old (which explains why How I Met Your Mother has been able to make doppelgangers a recurring motif throughout the show), such expressions at times thinly veil a degree of arrogance. By calling something new to me by a name less new to me, I am not merely making the new seem familiar, I am implicitly asserting that the new offers nothing that the old did not already. To be so colonial with cities is heinous; to do so with people, unforgivable. Sadly I am certainly guilty of the latter. After a certain point (somewhere between five hundred and a thousand Facebook friends, I reckon), not all those you meet are ‘new’ people, but rather new versions of old friends; they fall into various categories. And yet, gratifying though this may initially be, it is ultimately dangerous, as those new acquaintances will surely fail to live up to the identity of those we’ve associated them with, for they are not them, and it is also demeaning to them, for, again, they are not them. The same applies to cities. There may be similarities, but reducing the identity of a thing so complex, diverse, and wonderful as a city to a single story is woefully unhelpful. In the words of one commenter on the Seattlest website, “[I]t indicates a deep lack of civic self-esteem.” Even if the intent is by the city itself to boost its repute by attaching itself to the name of a better-known city, this still shows a lack of self-esteem; a lack of appreciation for own uniqueness. That this too applies easily to people, I doubt I need to highlight.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the concept of sister cities. Such programmes can provide excellent cultural links, but this would never lead to one city being called or even known by the name of the other. After all, what parents would give their children the same name (besides George Foreman, that is)? Their kindred-ness is evidenced by their similarities and love for each other, not identical names. So in answer to the question topping the Seattlest page – ‘sister cities or identity thieves?’ – I must reply that it is neither, it is simply a case of mistaken identity.

To wrap up, some evaluations. Firstly I propose that we dispense with calling a city a Seattle merely on account of its abundant rainfall or even amplitude of overcast days. Rain and clouds are not unique conditions; most of the world experiences them, and many places experience them in plenty. That Seattle is already known as ‘the rainy city’, I cannot do much about, but let us not behave as if it has a monopoly on the condition, nor as if that is the defining characteristic of Seattle. Even without having been there it is clear to me that there is far more to this urban area than the weather. If we were to select a proper noun to denote a general meteorological temperament, surely we would wish not to rob that noun of its other connotations by using it for such a purpose. In other words, calling Bergen the Seattle of Europe does Seattle a disservice, because it dispenses with all the characteristics of Seattle not mirrored in Bergen, which are likely everything but the rain; it does Bergen a disservice for the same reasons as well as the implication that Bergen has nothing worth knowing in its own right, by its own name; and it does the rest of Europe a disservice by ignoring all its other rainy cities.

At a more basic level, the phrase invites confusion, as it relies on everyone possessing the same primary connotation of Seattle; that is, rain, when in fact we have already seen that there are a number of viable connotations one could hold. ‘The Seattle of Europe’ could be a rainy city, a musical city, an aerospace city, a coffee-drinking city, or any other type of city that springs to mind in relation to Seattle, accurate or not. Ideally it would be all of these things for it to indeed be a true Seattle, but could that ever really happen? Would that even be desirable? Not only with regards to rain, but whenever describing, let us be wary of reductionism.

As for the aerospace parallel between Toulouse and Seattle, I have not much left to say. Seeing as its usage seems to be not very widespread but rather contained to the industry which it describes, the potential for confusion is mitigated. Those using it would know what they are talking about, as would those listening to it being used. The fateful instance of me in class which led to this lengthy endeavour was probably a one-off.

You may’ve guessed by now that I will not be introducing the city in which I now live as ‘the Seattle of Europe’. However all this has made me want to visit Seattle even more, to see what all these imitators yearn for. How about you? Have you come across any other cities that come up a lot in the descriptions of other cities, or places in general? Do you have places you fondly refer to by the names of places you used to know?

[I also realise that I love writing about cities; after all, I love cities (making it all the more interesting that my favourite album from my favourite band is called Cities). Perhaps I will make it more of a habit.

Thank you all for reading.]