Another remarkably erudite essay from M. Harrington. She seems able to write at this level about almost any subject.
I’ve visited the south east of England and everywhere within commuting distance of London seems to be very overcrowded. I’m not sure how you square high housing density with the type of connectedness to nature people seem to desire.
We should reconnect people with deserted town centres by changing the assumption that rows of shops can only be shops! Even when there’s no demand for shops. Turn them into dwellings. Repopulate the high street with people, as they were in medieval times.
I would agree if you lived in a megacity like London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Mexico City or any other megacity. However, I doubt that this will be the case in the foreseeable future, as most rural towns simply don’t have the infrastructure to attract people. But who knows what the next generation will decide for themselves: to work for a huge company or to start something smaller with personal commitment that wins the loyalty of customers and employees. What is not mentioned in this article is the corporate culture, which also alienates people because the pursuit of profit takes precedence over everything else. You end up living in an expensive environment where prices skyrocket and living standards become increasingly difficult for an ever-growing number of people working in a service-based economy. A service sector that produces a constant stream of substitutes working at ever lower wages in a very sterile cityscape.
Last edited 1 year ago by Raymond Inauen
Martin Bollis
1 year ago
As always, excellent from Mary. I was particularly struck by
“to a growing fear, across political divides, that “the fabric of Western society is unravelling”.”
Glad to know it’s not just me then!
No doubt the built environment is part of it, but I’m not sure architecture is going to fix what seems to be a much deeper malaise.
Watch the Premier League. I am sure there is a good book to be written somewhere comparing gladiators and footballers – the imagery, pageantry and financial incentives etc.
Might make an interesting Unheard article – Tom Holland or Giles Fraser would be my picks to write it.
Whilst i broadly agree with Mary’s analysis, her point with regard to “the fabric of Western society is unravelling” being at least partly due to the built environment, including supposedly natural spaces which have been manufactured, omits the even more inhuman architecture of the major cities of the East, such as Beijing, Shanghai (away from the waterfront) and any number of other connurbations; or the Soviet-era built environment in that bloc.
If such an environment is pushing us towards a disconnect with our own societies, how must it feel to live in those metropoli of the East? There is a difference of course, and that’s the plurality of Western society, which allows for greater debate and analysis of where we feel we are, as humans.
There’s a fair chance that we in the West will recover our nerve and continue to progress with equilibrium restored. I wouldn’t bet on that happening to any significant degree in the authoritarian societies of the East.
Tom Watson
1 year ago
As long as these emerging patterns don’t lead people out of the south-east. The rest of the country’s quite nice.
It will spread, though. I live in central southern England and it’s starting to affect us now; so, complacency can be mis-placed.
Adam Bartlett
1 year ago
Excellent as ever. Friedensreich Hundertwasser is maybe more the polar opposite to Le Corbusier , and might be prefered to Howard by someone with Mary’s sensibilities.
F K
1 year ago
Thank you Mary for another well written, highly readable and thought provoking essay which has, as always with you, so much greater depth than at first we might have expected! To add my tuppence-worth I found the ideas here to be another exploration of the bi-polarity in human consciousness that you do so very well (and if you like this sort of thing then ‘The Divided Brain’ by Iain Mcgilchrist is worth a read, otherwise, please move on past the rest of my particular ramblings!). Isn’t it the ability we have for spotting patterns and the need to then categorise and create ‘order’ that makes us human. Then extending the pincer grip (that only humans have) to wield the tools to make those thoughts a reality and thus create (to some of us anyway, depending on who we are) beauty or, on the flip side, destroying with conflict and war. Ideas, art, science, architecture, medicine, economics (chaos theory and fractals – an essay on the physical forces in nature that effect the financial system and politics maybe?). Applying the thoughts in Mary’s essay to the human condition, surely what we all really and truly want to be is happy and healthy and, in turn, we wish that for our families and communities too because, well, that has to be the ultimate reason for life beyond securing the basics (for most of us)? Sometimes though we can be neither happy nor healthy and need medicine, science, government to help us. But we need both art and reason to temper those left and right brain activities. We need to be able to keep our humanity and also understand the place we find ourselves in and how to navigate that particular world. If government, big pharma, business, etc provides that goal then great (though that rarely seems to have a happy ending). However, sometimes life takes us into that overgrown dead end in Mary’s local forest (the path the animals use). It is, as you say Mary, a little unworldly and can start to feel a little frightening and then what we desire most is a friend to guide us back to feeling safe and in control again. Isn’t this also true in architecture and medicine; government, economics and politics too. Isn’t this true with everything, everywhere because, without wishing to annoy most of you who may be bothered to read this, everything does feed into everything else, one way or another. But when we find ourselves wandering down that increasingly overgrown track, who might be that friend, professional or otherwise? Can we trust them, and maybe that is the big one. And maybe that is what we truly desire when we wander down that squiggly animal track. To find a beautiful clearing, fresh with the scent of sweet flowers and dew, a tree canopy reminding us of a cathedral and a chorus of friendly birds.. and, passing quietly by the shy and inquisitive deer who may be watching us from afar, perhaps all we really hope for is that that there may be someone holding out a hand for us to steady us on our way. And, we know that, just for a moment at least, we are safe and relevant and cared for.
Sophy T
1 year ago
Tower blocks are ugly and most people would rather not live in them – in the UK at any rate.
In World’s End, Chelsea, 30 or so acres of decent terraced housing was demolished and replaced with tower blocks. Not only are they eyesores but the people who were forcibly evicted and rehoused in the tower blocks have missed out.
A 833 sq ft. flat in one of the towers is for sale for £550,000.
A 835 sq ft flat 50 yards away in Lamont Road, is on the market for £1,370,000.
The housing estate should be demolished and replaced with decent housing. Why should council tenants not have acceptable dwellings?
Tom Lewis
1 year ago
It seems, to me, that the most influential architect and ‘planner for the built environment ‘ isn’t Le Corbusier, or Howard, but instead, Ole Kirk Christiansen (LEGO). Most urban planners and architects don’t seem to be able to move past their adolescent experiences. Maybe a ‘new’ generation, brought up with the likes of Minecraft, will have a more inspired vision for the future.
It seems to me that the very best artists and architects know when to stop fiddling. Delivering an 80% design and allowing the locals to apply their own desires for the remainder is probably better than specifying the colours to be used, the door furniture, and ‘permitted’ activities for common spaces.
Of course such ‘organic’ designs are unlikely to win any awards.
ARNAUD ALMARIC
1 year ago
It took the Romans a mere ten years to throw up the Colosseum*, and that included draining the lake that previously occupied the site. The Baths of Caracalla and Diocletian, plus Hagia Sophia all seem to have been completed within five years, so the sainted Victorians were not the first to complete projects on time!
However surely the great joy of London is its sprawling nature complete with formal squares and ‘irregular’ parks? In total contrast to many European cities, forever stunted by having been enclosed by fortifications for centuries; Vienna being a good example.
As to the title “Urban architecture is inhuman”, some would say that cities are the very basis of civilisation and thus very human. Again the Ancients led the way as can still be seen in Ostia (Italy), Lepcis Magna (Libya), Timgad (Algeria), Aphrodisias (Turkey) and many more. “Occ est vivere!”- that is to live! As ‘they’ used to say.
(* ‘Weighs’ approximately the same as four ‘Gothic’ Cathedrals.)
Ah, but you really can’t get the slaves these days.
Just something interesting (at least to me) I have read in a number of places the way that large engineering projects over-run, in both time and money, in Germany. This paper German paper is an interesting example : Large Infrastructure Projects in Germany: A Cross-Sectional Analysis
The idea of then being built by slaves is common misconception. I believe the vast majority of Roman public buildings were constructed by day labourers, or wage slaves if you will. It was actually a large reason they were built in the first place: to provide jobs to the great mass of the urban poor. State owned slaves were mostly used for other tasks like mining or security.
As an aficionado of the 1959 film Ben-Hur, it came as a great shock to me to later learn that the Romans did not employ galley slaves. Thus all those schoolboy jokes such as : “row faster, the Legate wants to water-ski”, became instantly redundant!
Thank you for that, fascinating!
Ever since 1914, if not before we seem to have been in awe of Germany, particularly their engineering prowess, so how refreshing to read such an honest analysis! The castigation of the IT sector, with its “Black Swan “ projects served to remind me how fortunate we were to abandon the idea of ID cards. The comparative analysis of State versus PPPs* came as no surprise, although the precise details did. There is so much more, we could discuss, but that would be to exhaust UnHerd’s patience I think.
Incidentally as to ‘slaves’ I think R Wright Esq (above) has put it perfectly. “Hire & Fire” is in fact far cheaper, and arguably crueller.
I’m pleased that you found the paper as interesting as I did.
Generally the Roman state employed contractors on building projects and these people owned the slaves.Unemployment among the proles (those whose contribution to the state was to produce children – prole meaning off-spring) was high because of the number of slaves performing unskilled (and skilled work too), hence ‘bread and circuses’ and the high proportion who voluntarily joined a more professionalised army after the Marian reforms of 107BC, which allowed proles to join. As you say above, galley rowing was not a slave’s job it was performed by free-men who were part of the Roman navy, and most building projects in the empire, Hadrian’s Wall for example, were constructed by trained legionary soldiers, probably with some local unskilled helpers. However, slaves were an important integral part of the Roman economy and worked on the land, in mines, in households, and on city projects.
I have yet to read a comparative analysis of the diet and perhaps longevity of say household slaves with that of urban proles? Do you happen to know of one? I suspect the slaves came of better.
I does seem extraordinary that there was a property qualification to join the Legions before the Marian reforms, just imagine that today!
I haven’t got this information to hand. However, some years ago I did manage to find out that a day-labourer got something just over 2½ sestertii per day (on average), how far that went though is a matter of speculation. A solder got pretty much the same pay and seemed to be able to save some even after expenses were deducted, so a day labourer could probably take care of himself IF he got work and IF he had no-one to support. The plight of slaves depended on where they worked, if they worked in a wealthy house-hold they could often do quite well, even accumulating enough wealth to buy their freedom; if they worked in the mines they didn’t live long enough to accumulate money or get freedom. Generally though, a reasonable master would want to get the best out of his investment and his human “tools” (as Aristotle put it) so would look after them to ensure peak performance, which would ensure providing sufficient “fuel”; quantity rather than quality I assume.
One of the most inhuman aspects of urban life is the lack of desire lines or more prosaically short cuts for pedestrians. Getting to the nearest shop or bus stop often requires you to walk half a mile along traffic clogged streets. Most developments built since the war have a single entry point and are isolated from surrounding areas on three sides. By contrast Victorian and earlier developments had multiple entrances so were effectively porous to walkers.
Simo O
1 year ago
excellent article- How did Le Corbusier become so renowned building such monstrosities which still plague our landscapes?
AC Harper
1 year ago
I’m reminded of Poundbury, an experimental new town or urban extension on the outskirts of Dorchester in the county of Dorset, England.
It has been built to ‘human scale’ and avoids most ordinary suburban rules. I like to visit every now and again to see how it ages. It is beginning to look more settled now as the rendering on houses is no longer pristine and there are a few tiny front gardens planted.
But I still come away thinking it looks like a film set. Grimly cute as others have said. And there doesn’t appear to be any provision for desire lines. So I guess that’s one way not to rebuild a social fabric.
Just had a look at Poundbury on GE – I can see what you mean, although that is fairly nifty as far as new developments go.
It does look like the back of Disneyland from the circular road, but I’d still prefer it to the equivalent in Hartlepool.
I really wanted to like Poundbury, mostly because the architects don’t like it, but it all looks so ersatz, and it seems as soul-less as many of the “modern” towns. Is it not possible to design something that is modern as well as organic? At Poundbury it is an amalgam of structures all trying to look older than they are; an artificiality based on nostalgia.
It needs to be the location of a truly epically dreadful film such as ‘Return to Downton Abbey’ and thus become a pilgrimage centre for masochists and the like.
Apparently in Scotland… ‘Outlander’ tours are a thing. Never got into that series. Did enjoy my Game of Thrones day near Belfast… my mum and I tried archery for the first time, she’s way better than me, lol. It’s lame, but I enjoyed getting into costume!
Absolutely wonderful place. I’ve been there many times and its a better use of one’s time.
Jonathan Nash
1 year ago
An interesting article again from MH, and I was pleased to learn the new term “desire path”. However, I am always suspicious about pleas for more “English vernacular” architecture, which often seem to provide cover for a conservative approach to planning and development, verging on the kitsch: Poundbury is an example in my opinion. I prefer to see modern design and modern materials in contemporary buildings, which does not imply that they have to be concrete “machines for living” per Le Corbusier. Although it was a massive white elephant so far as cost is concerned, I would cite the Scottish Parliament building as a modern, attractive piece of architecture.
Admittedly I’ve only seen photographs of it, and we have yet to see how it weathers, but I’m with you about the Scottish Parliament building, I rather like it.
Ugh. I don’t know when it was built, but it looks like a display of the future at the 1964 World’s Fair.
Robert Hochbaum
1 year ago
“simply leading ordinary lives in a place is what forms such a fabric”
That’s simple and profound. I would change it in one minor way:
*simply leading ordinary lives in a place, and with your people, is what forms such a fabric*
Sam Sky
1 year ago
Where does the author get the idea that geometric cities are purely a function of modernity? It contradicts basic facts anyone who had vaguely studied archaeology know. The vast majority of ancient civilizations that reached a level of sophistication to construct cities – Indus Valley, Egypt, Babylonia, Aztecs, Chinese, Etruscans, Greeks and of course most famously the Romans – built square, grid-based cities at least in new land and colonies. The Spanish were consciously copying the Roman models in the new world. The Russians built St Petersburg self-consciously as a grid opposing it to the maze like streets of Moscow, representing Peter the Great’s Westernising vision. If this use of reason is so inhuman and unnatural why did this pattern emerge repeatedly in different contexts and environments widely separated from each other?
Crazy, uneven cities emerge when there is no planning and people construct when and where they like. This was the case in old established cities say in the Roman empire (like the suburbs of ancient Rome), or Medieval Europe when there was no strong central authorities and the relatively small towns were constantly seeking new people to replace the a population with a death rate higher than birth rate, often by bribes like munumission of serfdom. In modern cities you see this happened: take Barcelona with a grid in the centre and the sprawling mess on the periphery, legacy of the cheap lawless development of the 60s and 70s. Or Latin American cities like Vallparaiso, Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires where the centre has a rationalistic planned Spanish/Portugese grid and the outskirts are the result of influxes of workers building their own slum housing on empty land.
Both of these outcomes are just as ‘natural’ and depend on the history of a city in question, and each city has different phases and spurts of growth.
Last edited 1 year ago by Sam Sky
Andrew Langridge
1 year ago
However lovely and romantic is this vision, the unfortunate relality is that city tower blocks and brownfield site developments leave the smallest environmental footprint. There is no need for huge additional infrastructure, or massive use of private cars to get to amenities.
Highish density and brownfield yes, but not tower blocks please! It is possible to create human scale built environments without reference to modernist styles and the obsession with exclusively using ugly engineering materials to build human habitation. The entire architectural establishment and its eighty year embrace of modernism and its derived forms is one of the most disappointing and soul crushing features of the 20th century.
Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Kerr
Richard Abbot
1 year ago
The urban environment encourages involvement, while limiting perspective. In the countryside it’s the other way round.
I also remember reading something by Dominic Cummings where he lamented the ever-increasing ‘time to market’ of new defence equipment. I suspect the inertia effects of bureaucracy are at play in this and Crossrail. The bureaucratic instinct is never to ‘do’ but to ‘talk about doing’
G F
1 year ago
@wrathofgnon writes about exactly this sort of thing. It’s an entire philosophy we would do well to follow..but architects hate us.
If you believe form follows function but don’t believe beauty or ornamentation has a function.. but also don’t really grasp how people function in the built environment, then we end up with the post-modern dross that has ruined the country and blighted community.
Beautiful is cheap because it out lives many generations. This is no use to the property developers who care for only money and the QS who only wants to save expenditure while budgets are inflated by pointless consultants. People who steal your watch and then tell you the time.
Last edited 1 year ago by G F
Dustshoe Richinrut
1 year ago
A very interesting piece. And well-written. Perhaps another name for a skyscraper should be a sky-blocker. The Victorians, I imagine, had more earthy pungent smells in their towns and cities. The clip-clopping of horses going past, even today, amid the noise of vehicles is like standing next to a waterfall: a tonic to the nerves. But we forget how things smelled and were heard as well as looked in the past. Horse manure would have been common. The environment of concrete and beat music, if not balanced by the occasional cry of paperboy hawkers (wearing cloth caps and shouting “Read all about it!”) and the clip-clopping of horses, as well as their waste, would drive one demented. Strong, earthy smells are good. The old milk floats sounded nice, a bit like Tesla cars today. If not for the noise of vehicles and the smell of leaded petrol and the occasional alarm and the odd radio blaring out Bay City Rollers, the smells of the Seventies probably had more familiarity with fifty or eighty years earlier than in the 2020s. For one thing, cigar smoke and ashtrays and mouldy and leather seats go some way to explain that.
I’ll stop now lest I lose marks for increasing irrelevancy.
Just one more thing. There was an article on Unherd recently about the New Town of a concrete city next to Glasgow that’s earmarked, I think, for destruction. It was meant to be the new and fancy way of living. If I recall from the article, it was opened by some grand person, lady it was, back in 1967 or thereabouts.
Another remarkably erudite essay from M. Harrington. She seems able to write at this level about almost any subject.
I’ve visited the south east of England and everywhere within commuting distance of London seems to be very overcrowded. I’m not sure how you square high housing density with the type of connectedness to nature people seem to desire.
Sad
We should reconnect people with deserted town centres by changing the assumption that rows of shops can only be shops! Even when there’s no demand for shops. Turn them into dwellings. Repopulate the high street with people, as they were in medieval times.
I would agree if you lived in a megacity like London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Mexico City or any other megacity. However, I doubt that this will be the case in the foreseeable future, as most rural towns simply don’t have the infrastructure to attract people. But who knows what the next generation will decide for themselves: to work for a huge company or to start something smaller with personal commitment that wins the loyalty of customers and employees. What is not mentioned in this article is the corporate culture, which also alienates people because the pursuit of profit takes precedence over everything else. You end up living in an expensive environment where prices skyrocket and living standards become increasingly difficult for an ever-growing number of people working in a service-based economy. A service sector that produces a constant stream of substitutes working at ever lower wages in a very sterile cityscape.
As always, excellent from Mary. I was particularly struck by
“to a growing fear, across political divides, that “the fabric of Western society is unravelling”.”
Glad to know it’s not just me then!
No doubt the built environment is part of it, but I’m not sure architecture is going to fix what seems to be a much deeper malaise.
What about “bread and circuses “ as Juvenal so politely put it?
Plenty of circuses, but the bread seems to be in short supply at the moment.
Watch the Premier League. I am sure there is a good book to be written somewhere comparing gladiators and footballers – the imagery, pageantry and financial incentives etc.
Might make an interesting Unheard article – Tom Holland or Giles Fraser would be my picks to write it.
Agreed! But why not invite Mary Beard*? Her scholarship dwarfs that of Holland or Fraser, plus she can be rather anarchic when required.
(*Convincingly thrashed our beloved Boris in the Greece versus Rome debate few years ago (2016) in Westminster Central Hall.)
Whilst i broadly agree with Mary’s analysis, her point with regard to “the fabric of Western society is unravelling” being at least partly due to the built environment, including supposedly natural spaces which have been manufactured, omits the even more inhuman architecture of the major cities of the East, such as Beijing, Shanghai (away from the waterfront) and any number of other connurbations; or the Soviet-era built environment in that bloc.
If such an environment is pushing us towards a disconnect with our own societies, how must it feel to live in those metropoli of the East? There is a difference of course, and that’s the plurality of Western society, which allows for greater debate and analysis of where we feel we are, as humans.
There’s a fair chance that we in the West will recover our nerve and continue to progress with equilibrium restored. I wouldn’t bet on that happening to any significant degree in the authoritarian societies of the East.
As long as these emerging patterns don’t lead people out of the south-east. The rest of the country’s quite nice.
It will spread, though. I live in central southern England and it’s starting to affect us now; so, complacency can be mis-placed.
Excellent as ever. Friedensreich Hundertwasser is maybe more the polar opposite to Le Corbusier , and might be prefered to Howard by someone with Mary’s sensibilities.
Thank you Mary for another well written, highly readable and thought provoking essay which has, as always with you, so much greater depth than at first we might have expected! To add my tuppence-worth I found the ideas here to be another exploration of the bi-polarity in human consciousness that you do so very well (and if you like this sort of thing then ‘The Divided Brain’ by Iain Mcgilchrist is worth a read, otherwise, please move on past the rest of my particular ramblings!). Isn’t it the ability we have for spotting patterns and the need to then categorise and create ‘order’ that makes us human. Then extending the pincer grip (that only humans have) to wield the tools to make those thoughts a reality and thus create (to some of us anyway, depending on who we are) beauty or, on the flip side, destroying with conflict and war. Ideas, art, science, architecture, medicine, economics (chaos theory and fractals – an essay on the physical forces in nature that effect the financial system and politics maybe?). Applying the thoughts in Mary’s essay to the human condition, surely what we all really and truly want to be is happy and healthy and, in turn, we wish that for our families and communities too because, well, that has to be the ultimate reason for life beyond securing the basics (for most of us)? Sometimes though we can be neither happy nor healthy and need medicine, science, government to help us. But we need both art and reason to temper those left and right brain activities. We need to be able to keep our humanity and also understand the place we find ourselves in and how to navigate that particular world. If government, big pharma, business, etc provides that goal then great (though that rarely seems to have a happy ending). However, sometimes life takes us into that overgrown dead end in Mary’s local forest (the path the animals use). It is, as you say Mary, a little unworldly and can start to feel a little frightening and then what we desire most is a friend to guide us back to feeling safe and in control again. Isn’t this also true in architecture and medicine; government, economics and politics too. Isn’t this true with everything, everywhere because, without wishing to annoy most of you who may be bothered to read this, everything does feed into everything else, one way or another. But when we find ourselves wandering down that increasingly overgrown track, who might be that friend, professional or otherwise? Can we trust them, and maybe that is the big one. And maybe that is what we truly desire when we wander down that squiggly animal track. To find a beautiful clearing, fresh with the scent of sweet flowers and dew, a tree canopy reminding us of a cathedral and a chorus of friendly birds.. and, passing quietly by the shy and inquisitive deer who may be watching us from afar, perhaps all we really hope for is that that there may be someone holding out a hand for us to steady us on our way. And, we know that, just for a moment at least, we are safe and relevant and cared for.
Tower blocks are ugly and most people would rather not live in them – in the UK at any rate.
In World’s End, Chelsea, 30 or so acres of decent terraced housing was demolished and replaced with tower blocks. Not only are they eyesores but the people who were forcibly evicted and rehoused in the tower blocks have missed out.
A 833 sq ft. flat in one of the towers is for sale for £550,000.
A 835 sq ft flat 50 yards away in Lamont Road, is on the market for £1,370,000.
The housing estate should be demolished and replaced with decent housing. Why should council tenants not have acceptable dwellings?
It seems, to me, that the most influential architect and ‘planner for the built environment ‘ isn’t Le Corbusier, or Howard, but instead, Ole Kirk Christiansen (LEGO). Most urban planners and architects don’t seem to be able to move past their adolescent experiences. Maybe a ‘new’ generation, brought up with the likes of Minecraft, will have a more inspired vision for the future.
It seems to me that the very best artists and architects know when to stop fiddling. Delivering an 80% design and allowing the locals to apply their own desires for the remainder is probably better than specifying the colours to be used, the door furniture, and ‘permitted’ activities for common spaces.
Of course such ‘organic’ designs are unlikely to win any awards.
It took the Romans a mere ten years to throw up the Colosseum*, and that included draining the lake that previously occupied the site. The Baths of Caracalla and Diocletian, plus Hagia Sophia all seem to have been completed within five years, so the sainted Victorians were not the first to complete projects on time!
However surely the great joy of London is its sprawling nature complete with formal squares and ‘irregular’ parks? In total contrast to many European cities, forever stunted by having been enclosed by fortifications for centuries; Vienna being a good example.
As to the title “Urban architecture is inhuman”, some would say that cities are the very basis of civilisation and thus very human. Again the Ancients led the way as can still be seen in Ostia (Italy), Lepcis Magna (Libya), Timgad (Algeria), Aphrodisias (Turkey) and many more. “Occ est vivere!”- that is to live! As ‘they’ used to say.
(* ‘Weighs’ approximately the same as four ‘Gothic’ Cathedrals.)
Ah, but you really can’t get the slaves these days.
Just something interesting (at least to me) I have read in a number of places the way that large engineering projects over-run, in both time and money, in Germany. This paper German paper is an interesting example :
Large Infrastructure Projects in Germany: A Cross-Sectional Analysis
The idea of then being built by slaves is common misconception. I believe the vast majority of Roman public buildings were constructed by day labourers, or wage slaves if you will. It was actually a large reason they were built in the first place: to provide jobs to the great mass of the urban poor. State owned slaves were mostly used for other tasks like mining or security.
As an aficionado of the 1959 film Ben-Hur, it came as a great shock to me to later learn that the Romans did not employ galley slaves. Thus all those schoolboy jokes such as : “row faster, the Legate wants to water-ski”, became instantly redundant!
Thank you for that, fascinating!
Ever since 1914, if not before we seem to have been in awe of Germany, particularly their engineering prowess, so how refreshing to read such an honest analysis! The castigation of the IT sector, with its “Black Swan “ projects served to remind me how fortunate we were to abandon the idea of ID cards. The comparative analysis of State versus PPPs* came as no surprise, although the precise details did. There is so much more, we could discuss, but that would be to exhaust UnHerd’s patience I think.
Incidentally as to ‘slaves’ I think R Wright Esq (above) has put it perfectly. “Hire & Fire” is in fact far cheaper, and arguably crueller.
(* Private-Public-Partnerships.)
I’m pleased that you found the paper as interesting as I did.
Generally the Roman state employed contractors on building projects and these people owned the slaves.Unemployment among the proles (those whose contribution to the state was to produce children – prole meaning off-spring) was high because of the number of slaves performing unskilled (and skilled work too), hence ‘bread and circuses’ and the high proportion who voluntarily joined a more professionalised army after the Marian reforms of 107BC, which allowed proles to join. As you say above, galley rowing was not a slave’s job it was performed by free-men who were part of the Roman navy, and most building projects in the empire, Hadrian’s Wall for example, were constructed by trained legionary soldiers, probably with some local unskilled helpers. However, slaves were an important integral part of the Roman economy and worked on the land, in mines, in households, and on city projects.
I have yet to read a comparative analysis of the diet and perhaps longevity of say household slaves with that of urban proles? Do you happen to know of one? I suspect the slaves came of better.
I does seem extraordinary that there was a property qualification to join the Legions before the Marian reforms, just imagine that today!
I haven’t got this information to hand. However, some years ago I did manage to find out that a day-labourer got something just over 2½ sestertii per day (on average), how far that went though is a matter of speculation. A solder got pretty much the same pay and seemed to be able to save some even after expenses were deducted, so a day labourer could probably take care of himself IF he got work and IF he had no-one to support. The plight of slaves depended on where they worked, if they worked in a wealthy house-hold they could often do quite well, even accumulating enough wealth to buy their freedom; if they worked in the mines they didn’t live long enough to accumulate money or get freedom. Generally though, a reasonable master would want to get the best out of his investment and his human “tools” (as Aristotle put it) so would look after them to ensure peak performance, which would ensure providing sufficient “fuel”; quantity rather than quality I assume.
Thank you.
I had been leafing through SLAVERY, by T.E.J. Wiedemann, OUP 1997, without much success.
There is a whole airport built and unused in Germany… whilst the aging Templehof is overloaded.
Templehof closed in 2008.
One of the most inhuman aspects of urban life is the lack of desire lines or more prosaically short cuts for pedestrians. Getting to the nearest shop or bus stop often requires you to walk half a mile along traffic clogged streets. Most developments built since the war have a single entry point and are isolated from surrounding areas on three sides. By contrast Victorian and earlier developments had multiple entrances so were effectively porous to walkers.
excellent article- How did Le Corbusier become so renowned building such monstrosities which still plague our landscapes?
I’m reminded of Poundbury, an experimental new town or urban extension on the outskirts of Dorchester in the county of Dorset, England.
It has been built to ‘human scale’ and avoids most ordinary suburban rules. I like to visit every now and again to see how it ages. It is beginning to look more settled now as the rendering on houses is no longer pristine and there are a few tiny front gardens planted.
But I still come away thinking it looks like a film set. Grimly cute as others have said. And there doesn’t appear to be any provision for desire lines. So I guess that’s one way not to rebuild a social fabric.
Just had a look at Poundbury on GE – I can see what you mean, although that is fairly nifty as far as new developments go.
It does look like the back of Disneyland from the circular road, but I’d still prefer it to the equivalent in Hartlepool.
I really wanted to like Poundbury, mostly because the architects don’t like it, but it all looks so ersatz, and it seems as soul-less as many of the “modern” towns. Is it not possible to design something that is modern as well as organic? At Poundbury it is an amalgam of structures all trying to look older than they are; an artificiality based on nostalgia.
Eh… perhaps Poundberry needs a community or a local ambience.
It needs to be the location of a truly epically dreadful film such as ‘Return to Downton Abbey’ and thus become a pilgrimage centre for masochists and the like.
Apparently in Scotland… ‘Outlander’ tours are a thing. Never got into that series. Did enjoy my Game of Thrones day near Belfast… my mum and I tried archery for the first time, she’s way better than me, lol. It’s lame, but I enjoyed getting into costume!
Yet barely a mile to the south lies Maiden Castle, arguably the finest Iron Age Fortress in the country.
Absolutely wonderful place. I’ve been there many times and its a better use of one’s time.
An interesting article again from MH, and I was pleased to learn the new term “desire path”. However, I am always suspicious about pleas for more “English vernacular” architecture, which often seem to provide cover for a conservative approach to planning and development, verging on the kitsch: Poundbury is an example in my opinion. I prefer to see modern design and modern materials in contemporary buildings, which does not imply that they have to be concrete “machines for living” per Le Corbusier. Although it was a massive white elephant so far as cost is concerned, I would cite the Scottish Parliament building as a modern, attractive piece of architecture.
Personally, I find the Scottish Parliament ugly. And we’ve had ‘modern design and modern materials’ for the last sixty years it’s time for a change.
What was wrong with Hamilton’s magnificent neo-classical Royal High School building, perhaps the finest in the country?
I was with you until your last sentence
Admittedly I’ve only seen photographs of it, and we have yet to see how it weathers, but I’m with you about the Scottish Parliament building, I rather like it.
Ugh. I don’t know when it was built, but it looks like a display of the future at the 1964 World’s Fair.
“simply leading ordinary lives in a place is what forms such a fabric”
That’s simple and profound. I would change it in one minor way:
*simply leading ordinary lives in a place, and with your people, is what forms such a fabric*
Where does the author get the idea that geometric cities are purely a function of modernity? It contradicts basic facts anyone who had vaguely studied archaeology know. The vast majority of ancient civilizations that reached a level of sophistication to construct cities – Indus Valley, Egypt, Babylonia, Aztecs, Chinese, Etruscans, Greeks and of course most famously the Romans – built square, grid-based cities at least in new land and colonies. The Spanish were consciously copying the Roman models in the new world. The Russians built St Petersburg self-consciously as a grid opposing it to the maze like streets of Moscow, representing Peter the Great’s Westernising vision. If this use of reason is so inhuman and unnatural why did this pattern emerge repeatedly in different contexts and environments widely separated from each other?
Crazy, uneven cities emerge when there is no planning and people construct when and where they like. This was the case in old established cities say in the Roman empire (like the suburbs of ancient Rome), or Medieval Europe when there was no strong central authorities and the relatively small towns were constantly seeking new people to replace the a population with a death rate higher than birth rate, often by bribes like munumission of serfdom. In modern cities you see this happened: take Barcelona with a grid in the centre and the sprawling mess on the periphery, legacy of the cheap lawless development of the 60s and 70s. Or Latin American cities like Vallparaiso, Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires where the centre has a rationalistic planned Spanish/Portugese grid and the outskirts are the result of influxes of workers building their own slum housing on empty land.
Both of these outcomes are just as ‘natural’ and depend on the history of a city in question, and each city has different phases and spurts of growth.
However lovely and romantic is this vision, the unfortunate relality is that city tower blocks and brownfield site developments leave the smallest environmental footprint. There is no need for huge additional infrastructure, or massive use of private cars to get to amenities.
Highish density and brownfield yes, but not tower blocks please! It is possible to create human scale built environments without reference to modernist styles and the obsession with exclusively using ugly engineering materials to build human habitation. The entire architectural establishment and its eighty year embrace of modernism and its derived forms is one of the most disappointing and soul crushing features of the 20th century.
The urban environment encourages involvement, while limiting perspective. In the countryside it’s the other way round.
I also remember reading something by Dominic Cummings where he lamented the ever-increasing ‘time to market’ of new defence equipment. I suspect the inertia effects of bureaucracy are at play in this and Crossrail. The bureaucratic instinct is never to ‘do’ but to ‘talk about doing’
@wrathofgnon writes about exactly this sort of thing. It’s an entire philosophy we would do well to follow..but architects hate us.
If you believe form follows function but don’t believe beauty or ornamentation has a function.. but also don’t really grasp how people function in the built environment, then we end up with the post-modern dross that has ruined the country and blighted community.
Beautiful is cheap because it out lives many generations. This is no use to the property developers who care for only money and the QS who only wants to save expenditure while budgets are inflated by pointless consultants. People who steal your watch and then tell you the time.
A very interesting piece. And well-written. Perhaps another name for a skyscraper should be a sky-blocker. The Victorians, I imagine, had more earthy pungent smells in their towns and cities. The clip-clopping of horses going past, even today, amid the noise of vehicles is like standing next to a waterfall: a tonic to the nerves. But we forget how things smelled and were heard as well as looked in the past. Horse manure would have been common. The environment of concrete and beat music, if not balanced by the occasional cry of paperboy hawkers (wearing cloth caps and shouting “Read all about it!”) and the clip-clopping of horses, as well as their waste, would drive one demented. Strong, earthy smells are good. The old milk floats sounded nice, a bit like Tesla cars today. If not for the noise of vehicles and the smell of leaded petrol and the occasional alarm and the odd radio blaring out Bay City Rollers, the smells of the Seventies probably had more familiarity with fifty or eighty years earlier than in the 2020s. For one thing, cigar smoke and ashtrays and mouldy and leather seats go some way to explain that.
I’ll stop now lest I lose marks for increasing irrelevancy.
Just one more thing. There was an article on Unherd recently about the New Town of a concrete city next to Glasgow that’s earmarked, I think, for destruction. It was meant to be the new and fancy way of living. If I recall from the article, it was opened by some grand person, lady it was, back in 1967 or thereabouts.
Another interesting piece