Continuing on a theme this morning, San Francisco writer John King, reviewing a new book about design by Deyan Sudjic, explains why cities continue to have a hold on our imagination, despite the ease of working and living outside of the traditional urban core. Excerpt:
All this should signal a death knell to the traditional core. Instead - recession aside - marquee hubs such as San Francisco stand more desirable than ever. It's not that we need to be here. But the center serves as a stage set, the spotlit focus for people who use urbanity to define themselves and their tribe.Cities aren't the focus of Sudjic's book, a well-tailored provocation that both explores why the best design work is timeless and decries how it can be debased for status or show. Thomas Chippendale and his 18th century furniture are explored as a precursor to Ikea - "a pioneer in brand creation" - and the ever-shinier line of Apple products is contrasted with the demise of the fountain pen as status symbol ("the basic concept has lost its relevance").
The underlying theme: the quest among designers and clients for "emotional resonance," the design of a watch or a laptop computer that connotes something beyond what it does: "to provide us with a reminder of the world beyond utility."
Which brings us back to downtown San Francisco, where so much of the terrain is fine-tuned to make you feel like something is happening - and that you belong in/to the scene.
More:
"In objects we value the 'authentic,' the hand-pressed. It's often the same thing with cities," Sudjic said in a telephone interview last week. "A (successful) city is about how it feels to be in a particular place, at a particular time."
I like that quote. I would suggest that the reason we love cities, and the reason that we respond emotionally to beauty, has something to do with why my two-year-old daughter spent four minutes watching the Queen of England's coronation, and was absolutely enchanted. There is something in our nature that craves elevation above utility.
(H/T: Wick Allison.)
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I think that's part of it.
My own belief is that cities are so attractive because they offer opportunities that simply do not exist anywhere else. I'm not just talking about economic opportunities either. Art in a city ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime to the debased, with all varieties in between. You just don't get that in rural areas.
Religion in cities is all about diversity, with everything from traditional Tridentine Masses to the most low of low churches to exotic creeds from around the world (I have a RC church, an "Indian" (i.e. Native American) Protestant church, a Baha'i temple, a Korean Protestant church and a Baptist church all within walking distance of my home, and that's just what I remember off the top of my head). In small towns and more rural areas, you end up with far more homogeneous religious communities.
And that sets aside the variety of immigrants, the different languages, the academic diversity (Denver has branches of major state universities, a major private university, a Catholic university, several community colleges, etc.)
In short, cities are exciting, exotic, bewildering, annoying (try parking in any major city!), dirty, crowded, noisy, beautiful and wondrous places to live. It's often too much, but you'll keep falling in love over and over again.
Obviously, it's not for everyone. If you like or need to be constantly surrounded by people who are very much like you (at least most of the time), you'll have trouble fitting into a city or a permanent basis (and here I exclude suburbs from quintessentially urban life—they're a kind of hybrid offering the economic advantages of the city with the homogeneity of the country). If you don't have much tolerance for people who believe different things from you, you probably ought to stick to smaller communities.
San Francisco, however it does it I don't know, seemed to me a collection of villages, when I spent time there. I was staying at one of the central hotels, but, walking around, I noticed differences too subtle for blunt explication - but in other ways obvious: this is here, that is there and it belongs there. It seemed the closest to a European notion of a city I had come to in America.
I thought to myself, I thought, Mr O'Neill, if the worse comes to the worst, you could live here. You could nearly get on. You could live here and not really have to change very much.
No wonder the American Right hates San Francisco.
No design in rural situations? Nonsense. There is very little intentional design required in urban monstrosities. I have lived and served for years at a time in New York City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Atlanta. I have also lived and served for years at a time in tiny communities, from Washington state to Georgia. I have traveled and consulted for congregations in 48 states, Canada and Mexico.
What passes for intentional design in urban areas is only response to massive populations. The only intention involved is the decision to subject one's self to the foul street life of those same massive populations.
Rather, the smaller rural populations create the opportunity to create relationships and impacts directly addressed to the inmost souls of people, not surface categories. Thus, urban populations rarely, if ever, have the opportunity to place their own soul next to that of another, and be together in God's chosen juxtaposition.
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