‘But a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time.’
- Patrick Geddes
‘Just as an individual person dreams fantastic happenings to release the inner forces that cannot be encompassed by ordinary events, so too a city needs its dreams.’
- Christopher Alexander
‘Give up all other worlds except the one to which you belong.’
- David Whyte
The second of four chapters exploring the themes of nature, place, compassion and pleasure. The focus of these chapters is to explore ideas that I feel are essential for discussion, if a system of deliberative democracy is to be established. As such, and once again, all that is expressed here is simply ideas and not necessarily proposals. If we had the chance, we would be allowed to decide on what kind of governance we might like. If we opted for a deliberative democracy, then we would have an opportunity of all being involved in making decisions about the subjects addressed in these four chapters. Until then, this is all just speculation. I hope, nonetheless, that the ideas explored will be by way of an incentive to see what we might all be talking about, if only the opportunity were given to us.
Place, a sense of place, and a sense of home, are essential for human flourishing. The significance of place to the human psyche is reflected in the English word ‘entrance’, which, of course, is also ‘en-trance’. Just the notion of crossing a threshold in space is enough to make us feel that we are also crossing a threshold in consciousness — that we might be put under a new spell or dream that a different space can evoke. Can we make our own home towns and cities places of joy, beauty and excitement? In our wealthy Western societies so many people seem to want to escape and to jet off to somewhere more ‘exotic’. But why not bring the exotic to us — create it for ourselves — instead of seeking it in someone else’s place? Neighbourhoods, villages, towns, cities, woodland and farmland could be bringing joy to our lives and enabling life to flourish.
We also make powerful statements when we name a place. The native people of Australia can apparently cross vast tracks of land without map or compass (or Google Earth) because every feature en route is named and has a story attached to it. Similar traditions are reported of other indigenous peoples. By contrast, our own UK government seems intent on constantly changing the boundaries of old counties and the constituency boundaries for political leaders. We are reduced as a people when the names of places are changed or lost.
A return to a sense of place would, I think, add to the pleasure that we find in life. The commons is about physical place. In the past, all human communities were rooted to place. But the rise of technology, leading to our increased communication and mobility, no longer make it so. We are increasingly ‘abstract’ — in other words, removed from our physical location. Community, ritual, the enhancement of cultural and social wealth, are all related to place. To neglect place, and see all places as somehow equivalent — because our technology overrides the vagaries of climate, language and ethnicity — is, I think, a bad move. But places, as they have developed over the centuries of human culture, are complex, and seeking to change them for the better will take a lot of wisdom and careful work.
There are competing interests involved in any human settlement. The most basic is the interplay of wilderness and city. Then there are the historic and current priorities set for certain kinds of developments — what the culture decides is most important for them — be it church, transport hub or shopping centre. Then there are the competing pressures from different interest groups — individuals looking for more space, businesses looking for prime sites to attract customers and/or to have good transport links and governments trying to balance all these often conflicting demands. As our human population increases, our towns and cities encroach on wild nature and on agricultural land. Meanwhile, outwith settlements, there are competing interests of wilderness with farmland, woodland and human interest in leisure.
Faced with all these conflicting elements, it seems it is often largely down to luck when a modern human settlement actually gets better by further development. The current situation in the UK and many other countries really does not lend itself to the creation of interesting townscape on a large scale. At first take, it seems that the only options available are either significantly greater state control or massive private investment. At the moment, when either of these does happen, the results can be somewhat mixed. The intention can often be aimed at helping business and therefore boosting employment, but this often only works in the short-term and often to the detriment of beauty and community.
Place is about the beauty of wild nature, the beauty of woodlands, parks and gardens, and the beauty of good townscapes. (‘The beautiful world our hearts know is possible’, in Charles Eisenstein’s words.) Considerations of beauty are often set aside when it comes to building a new road, a factory or power station. An established community with buildings that are admired and visited by tourists is compromised in the interests of ‘development’, usually with a short-term profit motive. Consider a town or a city that borders a strong natural feature such as the sea, a lake or a river, or perhaps one that is situated on a high promontory. If the buildings in such a settlement are in a good relationship with the natural location, then there is a certain harmony achieved — a balancing of the civilised and wild worlds. The threshold areas (seafront, lakeside, etc.) are places of interest and excitement, or at least they could be. So often, we see places with such special natural assets spoilt because of short-sighted profiteering or just careless and lazy regulation. David Fleming (Surviving the Future) described the importance of beauty and the enchantment of place thus:
‘And here is an intention: […] that every place is a sacred place; every ecology has its enchantment, its quiet music, its authority. At the very least, every town and village will need to be visible and communicative: places will have a meaning, giving signals of particular loyalties, of rooted obligations and belonging, of a cultural landscape. Public places and private houses will live up to the standards of urban designer Francis Tibbalds’ Tenth Commandment: “Thou shalt, with all means available, promote intricacy, joy and visual delight in the built environment.”’
If a café or a balcony space looking over a town square does not offer a sense of joy, then something is wrong. If we don’t care about the town square a few streets away, will we care about the shanty towns around so many cities in the developing world, the impact of global trade and travel, or the flooding of coastal cities because of climate change? We don’t seem to care enough about our towns and cities to want them to be beautiful places above all else — which would surely be to our long-term benefit. The glamorous and romantic locations of the world are somehow not our own towns and cities, which we so often deride as bland and ugly. But that has been our choice (or at least a choice forced onto most of us by planners, councils and architects). There is no reason why priorities cannot change, such that we build for the long-term future in a way that is both practical, human-friendly and nature-friendly. There is no reason why every town that we build is not one that harbours places of genuine delight, which people will wish to live in or to visit. Beautiful places attract people to them and generate wealth. This wealth may be of the more normal material kind, through increased investment and commerce. But it may also be in terms of the more abstract forms of wealth we have been describing in earlier chapters — cultural, social and emotional wealth. It often seems that such things are almost too obvious to state — that solutions are right under our noses. Yet, somehow that planning for our longer-term benefit, and the benefits of harmony with nature, appears to be too difficult for our governments. And, of course, most of the time, and for most of us, we have no say in how things are done.
I recognise that some might find this ‘connecting with nature’ and ‘beauty of place’ message as coming from a position of middle-class privilege. Poorer people, some might say, have neither the leisure or the advantages in life to be able to spend time considering such things. And climate change is sometimes bundled in with this too, as a middle-class concern. I recognise this complaint, but I think it could be turned around. Is it not patronising towards those very people that this stance is supposed to be defending, to suggest that they do not care about nature and the beauty of our towns and cities? I am not convinced by this too-busy-trying-to-make-a-living argument. People of all ‘classes’ and all levels of ‘intelligence’ are equally likely to care about such matters. And as for climate change, we will all suffer if we let that problem go, so a class argument just does not cut it.
Taking back Control of our Places
Our town or city, or the countryside around us, changes, and it seems that we have little or no say in what happens. If things change around us without our knowledge or consent, this is unsettling. Of all the matters that affect us today, I think this is the most direct. At best, there is a token opportunity to comment on local proposals — but often these are already just a done deal. Having a say in shaping our local environments would mean that we have a stake in creating beauty for ourselves and our communities. It would greatly help this process if we were to change our understanding of ownership of land and buildings so that ‘owners’ are more custodians of our natural commons and civic spaces, rather than private speculators. Here again is where our circles of government, or Parapolity, have a part to play — to keep our special places special.
The centres of so many towns and cities are struggling here in the UK. Bold plans are needed to revitalise them that will bring life back into city centres and improve civic pride. It is very important, however, that everyone is involved. Why can’t communities have a very much greater say in the use of land? Good regulations — ones that we have all been involved in formulating — will lead to places that we will grow to love — places of which we can all be proud. An ‘order’ is being imposed on our towns and cities, but it is an order that suits big business, the car, the airport and the often dubious intentions of governments. Jane Jacobs told us: ‘There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and be served.’ (The Death and Life of Great American Cities.) Jacobs’ quote reminds us that there is often an elite imposing their views on the rest of us, looking to ‘clean up’ our towns and cities. Darren Anderson — Imaginary Cities — warns:
‘The problem with building the mythic city of health was that it encourages a temptation to conceal or purge away the very people afflicted most by cities of plague. Malthusian horror comes hand-in-hand with puritanical repulsion towards the wrong kinds of people breeding (namely not ‘me and my kind’), from slums to housing estates.’
The chance to comment is almost worse than no chance at all, when we feel that our opinions are simply being disregarded. Sometimes it is big business that is moving in, with only a token process of consent, via the local government, and no voice for the local people. If we are not happy our only recourse is to mount a campaign. But why should we be put into a position of having to campaign over the use of land that is already rightfully ours? The current system, in most, if not all, developed nations, has things entirely the wrong way round. The land is ours. If there is something someone wants to do, they need to ask us first.
When we look at some of the towns that have been ‘designed’ by experts — Cumbernauld in Scotland is a prime example — it is easy to conclude that ordinary people could do a better job. What if our towns and cities were genuinely about people, genuinely human-scaled? ‘Human-scaled’ is often a very apt description of places that have popular appeal. Unfortunately, the term is over-used today and applied to developments that are anything but. What would our human settlements be like if the people living and working there had a greater say in how they look? For one thing, many of the places that we now find attractive were never ‘planned’ — at least not in the modern sense of the word. People often find delight in more informal styles of development common in poorer countries. What may begin as jumbles of random buildings, starts to take on a form and character unique to place and climate, and starts to become ordered in terms of infrastructure and in terms of the communities that live there; that’s if they are left alone and not intimidated by government. A Parapolity, for the governance of society in developed countries, might achieve similar results.
So the concerns raised above might be resolved by seeing land as a commons and setting in place a system of deliberative democracy. If we were to have a say on land use as it affects us directly in our own neighbourhoods, then we might start to see real improvement. As mentioned above, it is regulation that shapes our environment — especially our built environment. And we all need to be involved in devising the right regulations, particularly for the place we live. A Parapolity needs to allow for large-scale infrastructure projects and national planning regulations, but at the same time be very much more sensitive to local needs and local communities. The endnote gives details from Wendell Berry’s rules for a local economy.1
There is quite a contrast between how we feel about our towns and cities and how we feel about our own houses, if we are fortunate enough to own one. It is easy to see how today’s societies are very interested — not to say, obsessed — in private, as opposed to public, space. This is Darren Anderson:
‘”The house shelters daydreaming”, Gaston Bachelard wrote: ‘the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” Of all the utopias, the most practical then is that of maintaining your own sanctuary against outside encroachments.’ (Darren Anderson — Imaginary Cities)
The current culture — which I have described as Privatopia — is, in part, a response to the lack of control over our locality. We are dis-empowered with respect to our neighbourhoods, towns and cities, and therefore we settle for making our mark on a little piece of land over which we really can exercise control. No wonder neighbours fall out over tiny arguments about boundaries, hedges and driveways. The gated ‘community’ is becoming ever more popular in developed nations. But the more we shut out the rest of the world, the more chaotic the outside world becomes. We can only wonder if such places really do provide any sense of community. Are gated communities anything more than groups of wealthy people intent on protecting themselves from perceived threats from strangers? Perhaps there is a measure of contempt for the ‘wrong sort of people’ involved as well. This is not a solution, it’s a retreat.
By contrast, I believe we need to reclaim our neighbourhoods, towns and cities and make them places of joy and celebration for everyone! So along with beauty and sensible regulations, community is a further element towards the creation of good places. I know this is a big ask compared to shutting ourselves away in our own tiny bubble of private property. I hope, however, that the potential benefits are self-evident — safe, vibrant streets; friendly neighbours; places where nature can flourish; places where children are safe to play; places where we are happy to stay and just be ourselves, instead of always trying to ‘get way from it all’ on the latest exotic holiday that trashes the planet. It needs to be done with great care. When areas are ‘improved’ by councils or by big business — it can often mean that places become environments from which some people are excluded — see again, Darren Anderson’s quote in the ‘Taking back Control’ section above. The poor are locked out, often forcibly. Think of our shopping centres with their ever-increasing camera surveillance and security guards.
When it comes to housing, the design of new houses and the arrangements for social housing could form the ground of Parapolity. Building houses could be about building new community. It is too much of an important task to be left to the market to decide on who lives in a particular location. Future residents need to be brought together first, as in co-housing and similar models prevalent throughout many parts of Europe. Then, not only can people be actively involved in creating their own physical surroundings, they will also be gathered as a group of householders that will take up an ongoing responsibility for their immediate environment.
We might envisage a more dense urban environment and walkable city centres, to combat the sprawl of energy-wasting suburbs, but still with plenty of room for allotments, market gardens and parks.
The word, ‘community’ can often seem like a very abstract concept. But it need not be so. Community is built not just by meeting people but also by people coming together to build something together. This can be a club or an organisation, but it can also be by way of the entirely literal meaning of building together our houses, our neighbourhoods, our towns and our cities. Something governments currently seem to encourage us not to do. In this most literal and practical sense, we are separated from our making and our re-making when we have no say in the building of our physical environment.
Laws relating to land and land use vary from nation to nation, of course. In the UK, ‘common good’ land represents only a tiny and diminishing part of the total land area. Public space is generally not a commons. This goes for most parks, beaches, streets and town squares. All of these are usually ‘owned’ by the state, and the state places restrictions on what such spaces can be used for. Even land that genuinely is common land is often ‘managed’ by a local authority and often vulnerable to ending up under a road or a new school as the authorities simply appropriate common land without the necessary legal process. We also have ‘POPS’ (Privatisation of Public Space) — a policy guaranteed to exclude.
Why not then simply accept that all land has remained a commons? It does not mean that land and property would be seized by the state and re-distributed. Ownership, especially of land, is not a simple, all-or-nothing question. In Chapter 2, on ownership, we looked at the various ways land could be ‘owned’, and how more ownership (of the correct sort) can be an advantage. More detail about how this might be managed was given in Chapter 7. The shared ownership of the land could be acknowledged, and those currently owning it would become its tenants and custodians. Local communities would determine the balance of land use, types of development, infrastructure, wildlife, forestry, farming, water purity, noise levels and air quality, and make decisions accordingly.
The simple acknowledgement that land, water, air and different types of human activity ultimately belong to all of us, would have a significant effect on our attitudes to neighbourhoods, towns, cities and to the planet as a whole. Community would become more than just sharing the occasional barbecue with the neighbours. We would all have a stake in what was happening in our neighbourhood and hopefully see it as a shared responsibility and a shared pleasure. Changing our relationship with place is also about our changing relationship with nature. Neighbourhoods may take especial interest in gardens, wildlife corridors, parks and other open spaces like beaches, lakes and rivers. In the last chapter, we noted the immense importance such places have to our well-being. At the moment, we seem to divide land up amongst households and see a stockade of walls, fences and roads in most towns and cities. The idea of open spaces, where people, wildlife, food-growing, trees and recreation can all inter-mingle might seem like a recipe for chaos. But I suggest this is only because of what we are used to. There seems no reason why activities are not mixed around in much more interesting ways than they are at present. We need our quiet spaces and our privacy, of course, but we also derive great benefit from variety and vibrancy. A rethink might give us the best of both worlds.
Local infrastructure and local businesses will be of particular interest to any system of deliberative democracy. How can we meet people’s needs locally with respect to food, schooling and work? How can local business enhance rather than destroy the local environment and the local community? If we are willing to participate, and our voices are really heard, then there is an opportunity to shape all of these things and to take pleasure over places that start to really belong to us. Small-scale local business can often survive better than big business, provided it is grounded in local industrial districts and strong communities. (A principle known as ‘flexible speculation’. See Michael J. Piore and Charles F. Sable — The Second Industrial Divide.) Schooling can be more about doing than gaining abstract knowledge. This would give every child a chance to flourish, rather than those who just happen to have the skill-set useful for theoretical knowledge. Education could be linked to business more directly, with a return to the apprenticeships we used to have, rather than the proliferation of rather dubious degree courses. Apprenticeship is local, so this in turn links to place. As well as transient populations of students, we could have local young people interested in local jobs and local places.
Finally, in this chapter, it is necessary to take stock of the enormous damage done to our built environment, our health and to nature by the private car. Nothing is quite such a symbol of Privatopia as the car — taking our own world with us as we travel around, whilst reducing everything outside to ‘scenery’. The car is a status symbol; a representation of personal freedom and autonomy. Cars make us feel like we are in control, and this is something valued highly in most societies, especially when we feel that we have little control over anything else. Again, this ties in with the idea of a Privatopia — controlling a small part of the world, because we lack any real control over our governance. Meanwhile, transport is, of course, a major contributor to climate change, a cause of air pollution and a major cause of death and injury through accidents. Roads have carved up towns and cities, making them noisy and dangerous, and often isolating communities. Cities, over the past half century or so, have been built around the car, and the result has been a blight on any joy and celebration and civic pride that they might once have had. Building a new road, to ease congestion, often means it just fills up with even more traffic. Making cars more fuel-efficient often has the effect that people will use them more. (Jevon’s paradox.) Electric cars and driverless vehicles will only solve a small portion of these problems, and may create new problems into the bargain.
Our obsession with personal travel is a difficult subject to tackle, but one of the most important when it comes to thinking about place. Few of the other things discussed in this chapter will be possible without, at the same time, thinking about transport. There are some signs of hope. Many cities are becoming increasingly pedestrianised, having traffic-free days or introducing congestion charges. We could just stop building roads. We could invest heavily in public transport and make it free or very cheap to use. But it’s also necessary to acknowledge the deep attachment people have for their own private vehicles — an attachment that is only growing in extent, as the people of more and more nations become wealthy enough to afford cars. But it’s here I have to take things on the chin. If we had a Parapolity and people had the chance to choose, it may be that people would choose to keep their cars above almost everything else. If we believe in true democracy, then we would have to live with this choice.
The ‘Slow’ movement, encompassing towns and cities, slow food, slow medicine, slow work and much else besides, is brilliantly explored by Carl Honore’s book, In Praise of Slow. The CittaSlow movement, which began in Italy, has a lot to teach us about place. The CittaSlow principles are given in the endnote.2
Let me stress again, these are only suggestions.