PD Smith

I’ve just reviewed two very dif­fer­ent but fas­ci­nat­ing books: The Lon­don Square: Gar­dens in the Midst of Town, by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan and Build Your Own Time Machine: The Real Sci­ence of Time Trav­el, by Bri­an Clegg. I’ve always thought Lon­don’s gar­den squares are one of the most beau­ti­ful fea­tures of the cap­i­tal (espe­cial­ly Rus­sell Square gar­den, above), so I was delight­ed to read Todd Longstaffe-Gowan’s beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed book: “Squares are arguably Lon­don’s most sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the devel­op­ment of urban form (there are some 300 in Greater Lon­don). Inspired by the Ital­ian piaz­za, they were intro­duced in the 17th cen­tu­ry as a way of cre­at­ing open spaces at the cen­tre of Lon­don’s new res­i­den­tial neigh­bour­hoods. But it was not until the fol­low­ing cen­tu­ry that their gar­dens were enclosed and the gates locked against the ‘rude­ness of the pop­u­lace’.” Read the rest of the review at the Guardian. Bri­an Cleg­g’s study of time trav­el is an excel­lent sur­vey of an end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing sub­ject. A delight for all epi­cures of dura­tion. My review was in the TLS. Read it here.

“Human his­to­ry would be vast­ly dif­fer­ent with­out cities. The move from vil­lage life, where one is sur­round­ed by fam­i­ly and kin, to urban life among strangers – this has fun­da­men­tal­ly shaped us as a species. Cities, as Lewis Mum­ford has said, are ‘the molds in which men’s life­times have cooled and con­gealed.’ Writ­ing begins in cities, and cities are where the first libraries and muse­ums are built. These dense cen­tres of human­i­ty have nur­tured trade, sci­ence, reli­gion, phi­los­o­phy and the­atre. The sto­ry of cities is also the sto­ry of human civil­i­sa­tion.”

I’ve been inter­viewed about my new book City by Karl Whit­ney. Read the full inter­view at 3:AM Mag­a­zine.

When I was review­ing a col­lec­tion of Michael Moor­cock­’s non-fic­tion recent­ly, I was struck by this pas­sage from a piece he wrote about Lon­don in 1988, called ‘Build­ing the New Jerusalem’:

‘Cities can be nei­ther sim­pli­fied nor eas­i­ly defined. They are hard to inter­pret. They are the ulti­mate and nat­ur­al expres­sion of human evo­lu­tion, of human dreams and needs; they are as com­plex as the peo­ple who build them, as the plan­et itself; they have a sen­si­tive ecol­o­gy. In their archi­tec­ture and their social organ­i­sa­tion they are capa­ble of reflect­ing the very best in us.’

That’s a won­der­ful quote that neat­ly encap­su­lates what I was try­ing to achieve in my book City. On the future of Lon­don, he writes:

‘Instead of retreat­ing from the notion of the mega­me­trop­o­lis we should have embraced it, cel­e­brat­ed it, grown com­fort­able with it, equipped it with hos­pi­tals, crèches, schools, hous­es set among imag­i­na­tive­ly laid-out parks and “wild gar­dens”, with low-rise asym­met­ri­cal build­ings designed to blend with and reflect the organ­ic world around them. We should acknowl­edge and rev­el in the nat­ur­al com­plex­i­ty of the Lon­don we can cre­ate for our­selves.’

It’s an inspi­ra­tional piece of writ­ing about cities in gen­er­al and Lon­don in par­tic­u­lar. The col­lec­tion — Lon­don Pecu­liar and Oth­er Non­fic­tion — is well worth read­ing.

“The char­ac­ter of a city comes from its peo­ple. And that’s why the best cities are mul­ti­cul­tur­al and cos­mopoli­tan: there’s a unique atmos­phere when peo­ple are con­stant­ly nego­ti­at­ing the dif­fer­ences between cul­tures and lan­guages. I hope what this book shows is how pos­i­tive that is, and how urban­ism isn’t a new thing. It’s our nat­ur­al mode of liv­ing.”

From my inter­view with Vision mag­a­zine about urban­ism, Dubai and my new book, City: A Guide­book for the Urban Age.
Read more here.

I’ve just returned after a hol­i­day in Japan. It was my first time there. We stayed in Tokyo and Kyoto, with a few days in the moun­tains of Hakone. As I write, my brain keeps telling me it’s the mid­dle of the night. I’m dog-tired but my mind is also buzzing with the sights and sounds of Japan­ese cities.

In the six­teenth cen­tu­ry, Tokyo was lit­tle more than a small town. Now it’s the largest metrop­o­lis on the plan­et, with some 33 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing in the met­ro­pol­i­tan region. That’s about the same num­ber as live in the whole of Cana­da.

Con­tin­ue read­ing…