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This paper asks some questions about man and nature from one point of view, that of an interest in the city. It puts forward a few current concepts of the city with emphasis on recent social studies. It asks to what extent the making of cities and living in them is ‘natural’ to man; to what extent they have always been a deliberate statement about man’s relationship to the world of nature (is there a conflict here ?); and it tries to show the direction in which cities are developing and the degree to which these developments may be said to enhance and enrich experience or to impoverish and destroy it. It is a personal statement and is not in any way an attempt to give a critical summary of current sociological, planning and artistic critiques of the city.
The City as Experience
After some weeks of reading in preparation for writing this paper I was preparing to make a concentrated start on it one evening. It happened that I had cause to visit a friend in a local hospital that same evening. The journey was short, through a decaying industrial/ housing part of the city. The hospital itself is entered through an arch over a narrow carriage way, unaltered since horse and carriage days as witnessed by the width of the opening and the stone cart tracks leading into a cobbled yard; the hospital building, an agglomeration of bits and pieces from the last 100 years or so. The pub next to the hospital, on a Friday night, is crowded and noisy and a refuge for both patients and staff.
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- Copyright © 1971 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
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