Does where we live shape how ambitious or creative we become? If you swapped Lagos for Jos or New York for Kentucky, would your goals or creative drive look different? It’s a question that lingers in the background of our lives, even if we don’t often pause to examine it. The truth is, the places we live in: their pace, their opportunities, their noise, and their silence, leave deep marks on the way we dream, hustle, and create.
This is not just about geography; it’s about psychology, society, and culture. Cities and small towns both give us different kinds of fuel. One drives ambition through speed and competition, while the other nurtures creativity through calm and reflection. The balance between the two is what shapes much of human progress.
Psychologists and sociologists have long argued that our environment is not just a backdrop, it actively moulds our behaviour and outlook. A bustling city with its tall buildings, traffic horns, and crowded sidewalks creates a psychological pressure cooker. It constantly reminds you of movement, success, and the endless race to achieve. In that atmosphere, ambition is not just encouraged; it is demanded.
On the flip side, smaller towns, with their slower pace, familiar faces, and quiet mornings, offer the kind of mental breathing space that allows creativity to thrive. When the noise dies down, ideas have room to stretch. This doesn’t mean smaller towns lack ambition, but the ambition there often takes a different form: less about competing with thousands of others and more about cultivating something original or deeply personal.
Psychologists call this environmental priming — the way our surroundings subtly but powerfully set the stage for how we think and act. Just as a cluttered room can make you feel restless, or a serene beach can put you in a reflective mood, cities and towns create emotional templates that shape our ambition and creativity.
Fast-Paced Cities: The Fuel for Ambition
Think of Lagos, New York, or London. These cities are engines of ambition. The pace is relentless. The opportunities are concentrated. You are constantly reminded that success is just around the corner but so is failure if you do not keep up.
One of the greatest assets of big cities is exposure. In Lagos, you might bump into an entrepreneur in a co-working space. In New York, a subway ride can connect you to people working in tech, finance, or the arts. These networks feed ambition by making goals seem possible and accessible. When you see others achieving big things daily, your mind adapts to the idea that you can too.
There is also competition: healthy and unhealthy. In big cities, there is always someone smarter, faster, or more resourceful. Rather than discouraging, this often fuels ambition. It creates a culture of hustle where survival itself means striving higher.
Examples from the World Stage
Take Elon Musk, for instance. He grew up in Pretoria, South Africa, a city that is far from sleepy but not considered a global hub for groundbreaking tech. To truly stretch his ambition, he had to relocate to Silicon Valley, the epicentre of technological innovation. Similarly, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie honed her literary voice in Enugu, Nigeria, a city rich in culture but not positioned as a global literary capital. It was only after moving to the U.S., a place widely regarded as one of the world’s main cultural stages, that her work found worldwide resonance.
The point here is not that Pretoria or Enugu lacked energy or ambition, but that individuals like Musk and Adichie, and countless others across fields, eventually had to step onto platforms considered the “world’s stage” to thrive at scale. Creativity can spark anywhere, but for it to echo globally, it often needs the amplification that only certain cities provide.
The Downside of City Life
But city life comes at a cost. The ambition it fuels is often tied to comparison. You might find yourself chasing goals not because they matter to you, but because everyone else seems to be running toward them. The burnout rate is high, the stress levels are higher, and sometimes the ambition produced in big cities is less about purpose and more about survival.
Smaller Towns: The Quiet Space for Creativity
In smaller towns, life moves differently. Morning greetings last longer. The streets aren’t always jammed with traffic. People know you by name, and there’s a rhythm of predictability. Far from stifling, this atmosphere often provides the freedom to think differently.
Creativity thrives in environments where silence and reflection are possible. Writers like Chinua Achebe grew up in Ogidi, a relatively small town in Anambra State, where the cultural depth of Igbo life inspired his creative works. Musicians and painters often retreat from cities to quieter spaces when they need to create. The lack of distraction allows them to develop ideas more authentically.
Small towns often provide stronger social support. That closeness gives people the courage to take risks with creativity because they know their community has their back. A local craftsman in Jos might create woodwork not to compete with global standards, but to carry forward a tradition. That, too, is creativity at work.
Yet, for many, creativity alone is not enough without a platform. Burna Boy, one of Nigeria’s global music exports, started his creative journey in Port Harcourt, a city known more for oil than for international music fame. But it was Lagos, with its bigger platforms and global connections, that turned his talent into worldwide ambition. Similarly, Cristiano Ronaldo grew up on the small Portuguese island of Madeira, where his football skills were nurtured, but it took a move to Lisbon and later Manchester United for his ambition to fully blossom.
These examples remind us that while creativity can be born in the quiet of smaller towns, ambition often requires exposure to the big stages that only larger cities provide.
The Interplay Between Ambition and Creativity
It would be wrong to assume ambition belongs to cities and creativity to towns. Both qualities exist in both places, but they take different shapes.
- Cities accelerate ambition but can sometimes stifle deep creativity. The constant rush leaves little room for quiet reflection.
- Towns nurture creativity but can limit ambition. A brilliant painter in a rural setting may not have the gallery or patronage needed to reach beyond their immediate environment.
This interplay is not a weakness; it’s a partnership. Human progress has often depended on ideas born in quiet towns but scaled in noisy cities. The Wright brothers, who invented the airplane, worked from Dayton, Ohio, not New York. Yet their ambition needed the wider recognition of global platforms to reshape the world.
It’s also true that not everyone is drawn to the hustle and bustle. Some people simply do not like the fast-paced nature of big cities. They tolerate them for opportunity but quickly retreat to the calm of smaller towns when they can.
This is common in Nigeria, where many professionals work in Abuja or Lagos but build homes in Aba, Owerri, or even their village, where they plan to retire. The city is where they do what they have to do, but their hearts and minds are nourished by quieter environments. For such people, ambition is a tool, but creativity and peace of mind are the ultimate goals.
Harnessing the Best of Both Worlds
The truth is, we don’t always get to choose where we live. Sometimes life decides that for us through work, family, or circumstance, but we can choose how to use our environment. Every environment has something to offer; the trick is learning to tap into it.
If you live in a big city:
Yes, the pace can be exhausting. The traffic, the deadlines, and the endless noise all have ways of pulling you into survival mode. But even in the middle of the chaos, there are pockets of calm. It could be a quiet corner in a park, a small coffee shop that feels like an escape, or even weekend getaways where your phone finally stops buzzing. Seek those spaces deliberately, because they give your creativity the oxygen it needs to breathe. A city will naturally push your ambition higher, but you have to carve out stillness so your ideas don’t get lost in the rush.
If you live in a smaller town:
The slower pace doesn’t mean you’re cut off from big dreams anymore. We live in a digital world where a songwriter in Antarctica can upload their music to Spotify, or a designer in Holetown can sell to clients in New York without leaving home. Use that to your advantage. Smaller towns gift you with focus and fewer distractions, combine that with the reach of online platforms, and suddenly your ambition has no borders. What used to be a limitation can now be a launchpad.
If you’re somewhere in between:
Some people live in mid-sized cities or shuttle back and forth between big cities and smaller towns. If that’s you, the key is intentionality. Let the city sharpen your ambition, push you to network, set higher goals, and see what’s possible. Then let the slower environment feed your creativity, giving you clarity and fresh ideas. Think of it as borrowing strength from both worlds, instead of feeling torn between them.
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So, does where we live shape how ambitious or creative we become? Absolutely. Cities inject us with urgency and competitiveness, while smaller towns gift us space for reflection and originality. Yet, neither is complete without the other. Creativity without ambition may never leave the bedroom, and ambition without creativity may chase goals that lack soul.
Ultimately, our environment sets the stage, but we write the script. Some of us thrive on the energy of cities, others draw inspiration from quiet towns, and many of us dance between the two. What matters is not where we are, but how we choose to use where we are to nurture the kind of ambition and creativity that aligns with who we truly are.
So, let me leave you with this question: If you swapped the place you live today for somewhere completely different (a bigger city or a smaller town), how would your goals and creativity shift?
Stay frosty.
