Urban growth

There are a few cities that are iconic with a natural splendour, an image which everyone carries in their head as an exciting place to visit. 

Cape Town with its magnificent mountain backdrop and twisty coastal roads leading one around the Peninsular. Skirting pristine, bleach white beaches the road clinging's to the edge of a cliff face which plunges straight into the sea, waves breaking and pummelling the rocks below as the power of the ocean transforms its self into exasperated columns of sea and spray. 

Sydney is no less iconic. Its mountain is the harbour, the city has enclosed this inland stretch of water and cove with its own blend of iconic shape. The Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and on the Harbour its self, the ever busy ferry's, yachts and power boats scurrying around on the water. 

Rio de Janeiro has the Sugar Loaf Mountain as a backdrop, the Copacabana Beach and the beautiful half clad South American women to remind you of what perfection is all about.

Most of us living our urban existence, live in far less prepossessing surroundings. The growth of many of our cities is the result of commerce and manufacturing with what appears little planning and, when there is planning, there seems little thought about the people who are asked to live their lives there.    

Coming a generation or two ago from villages or small market towns where we knew most of our neighbours, the scale was right and we communicated continuously because we had so much in common. People migrated to the city urban landscape where everyone is a stranger and we have little nothing in common. 

The urban planner was complicit in not treating the human condition with warmth and understanding. Instead they designed accommodation around the tower block. 

The street which had always been the meeting place for all the family, from the kids playing together to the older generation gossiping over the garden wall, is many miles away from the High Rise concept where the architectural

drawing of the structure is peopled by the decorative stick person, an afterthought to the construct. 

There is no sense of shared space where people can get to know each other and form friendships, in fact the opposite occurs with people not only not knowing their neighbours but fearing them and isolating themselves even further. This isolation is magnified in the urban sprawl, the crowded street of strangers, the tube journey where eye contact is avoided it all dehumanises mankind and breeds the schizophrenic society we see in the city today.