Whenever I go to the country I feel I somehow miss the
city. The city has so much to offer.
It is a pity that we all seem to hate the city.
The night before I left for the country I was looking
at a very interesting book, Paul Knox’s Urban
Social Geography, reading
about the attitudes of people towards the city.
People generally believe that they would live better
in the country than in the city. Nevertheless, there was something that brought them to the city in the first
place.
Do people really ignore the opportunities that exist in cities? Knox mentions Baudelaire, pointing
out that the diversity people experience in the city can lead to change in a cultural way. Remember
how important the cities have been throughout history when it comes to cultural
change: it is precisely because cities embrace
difference; it’s in the cities that we
have the chance to meet new people every day.
How important cultural change is, and yet we forget.
Nothing can easily begin in the country. Everything begins in the cities.
Everything began in the ancient ones.
I visited Ancient
Messene during my holidays. This is a highly preserved site of the ancient
city, with a complete stadium, various temples, and a theatre. Crammed up, this little ‘city centre’ evoked the
lost era very clearly, and at the same time it was relatively easy for me to picture
exactly how life could have been there.
It was the epitome
of city ruins, to me. Not segmented like ancient Athens. It is all there for us to see…
References
Knox, Paul. Urban Social Geography. An Introduction.
Third Edition. 1995. Essex: Longman.
Thanks very much for reading.
