[ad_1]
Robert Harris, novelizing the Dreyfus affair, captures all too well the great sewer stench of Paris of 1895. He writes the evil miasma of a dense city that “infiltrates” even into the mouth, so that ” everything tastes like corruption. “
It did not corrupt talent. That year, on Rue Laffitte, Paul Cézanne received his first solo exhibition. Along the Seine, the Lumière brothers, the purest case of nominative determinism, screened the first film, all 50 seconds, to the crowded patterns. The free-flowing Paris was also Sarah Bernhardt’s Paris.
There is nothing in logic to suggest that a softer, more orderly city would not have vanished with this creative force. So why is it so hard to imagine?
Even before the pandemic, with its “healthy nature,” cities aspired to quasi-rural. The planned refurbishment of the Champs Elysées to make it a hostile “garden” for cars is just one In the city of the countryside scheme. An architect friend has the task of enlarging the Thames embankment at intervals from Chelsea to Blackfriars. I encourage almost all of these good works. But I also wonder if the creative uses of a testing environment are getting lost in the bargain.
It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is about the crowded and stressed humanity that gives rise to genius. The vision received is that density allows collaboration. Cézanne was from Provence, his gallery of the Reunion: where would they have crossed at random? Another theory is that constant stress and danger force us to operate at a higher mental tone. But whatever the mechanism of transmission between a harsh environment and an inner magic, it is clear enough that there is. History throws out too many difficult but vital cities, too good, but banal, to ignore. From this it follows that, beyond a certain point, a more livable place runs the risk of being less exciting.
At this point, it is correct to stipulate that cities exist for the benefit of those who live there, not the avant-garde. If it were that simple. As the main laboratory for testing ideas of our kind (in art, food, and business), cities generate vast externalities of the most benign kind. Your morning coffee, your freedom to sleep with whoever you want: now there are many things better because of the urban pioneers whose behavior spreads elsewhere. There is a utilitarian case for directing cities with the maximum creative inclination, even at the expense of their own habitability.
What an unwanted reappearance this word has made since the pandemic. Probably no city is more livable than Vienna. (The Economist Intelligence Unit, which used to agree, crowned it in Auckland and other Pacific comparisons this month.) But who thinks the future will be reflected in this box of chocolates? He has worked hard to reverse the decline of the population since the time of Klimt and Freud. A world without Vienna and its lordly type would be coarse. But a world that would make Vienna the benchmark would be torpid. What happens to the capacity for life is that a city can die from it.
Never relax in your surroundings. From the green Washington, orderly but too understandable, I defend this case from chaos. Los Angeles is my favorite place in the United States (a nation whose cities have a habit of making sense) precisely because of its stimulating entropy.
No doubt this argument can be exhausted. It’s not like the less livable cities (Caracas and Douala, apparently) are the most creative. A certain kind of London or New York pine cruelly for a nervous past, as if the Ramones were worth all the stabbings. Leave me out of that. The question is rather of balance. There is an optimal level of environmental stress and it is not zero. I trust no one less with the future of cities than the mystics of the return to nature and the hated third live in Palo Alto) who dominate the zeitgeist.
The post-pandemic city, they are right, could be better. They just misunderstand the reason why. The hope lies in the fact that people who love space, clean air and ease for children will move. What remains will be a smaller urban population but with a younger and more adventurous profile. There may be no gains in habitability. But there should be one of creative ingenuity. Beneficiaries, as always, will not stop at the city limits.
Send Janan a janan.ganesh@ft.com
Carry on @FTLifeArts on Twitter to learn first about our latest stories
The best of the FT weekend
Summer books 2021
From politics, economics, and history to art, food, and of course fiction: FT writers and critics write his favorite readings from the year until now
The century of China’s revolution
Chaos against control: As the Chinese Communist Party turns 100, its leaders are still struggling to reconcile growth and stability. James Kynge informs
[ad_2]
Source link
