A village somewhere

It’s too easy to attribute all kinds of virtue to the simple life that folks experience in the countryside and think that city-dwelling automatically turns people into nasty mean-spirited fiends.

Way too pat.

But there’s quite a lot to sing about the life scaled to size, to real needs and happiness often found in rural society. I can attest to that just having come from spending such a time in a delightful village, somewhere in the English countryside. Me an asphalt warrior if ever there was one was charmed by the gentle hills, the lovely old cottages, the quiet lanes filled with birdsong, the hedges and the gardens, the civility of people greeting each other in the street that includes perfect strangers.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the city, in the sense given by ancient Greeks: “the polis, a city-state in its ideal form for philosophical purposes”, with some shopping thrown in too.But I abhor watching beloved cities veer away from that initial purpose to showcase not only wealth, hélas! but greed and conceit paired with extraordinary bad taste. It started with just greed -conceit and bad taste came later.

In the Eighties great architects like I.M.Pei replaced cathedrals to God with temples to money and we got the Bank of China in Hong Kong.

I must admit I was in awe when I first saw it –a striking building meant to provoke such devotion that one felt kneeling down was not entirely out of place. I.M.Pei’s purpose was commercial and he never lost sight of it.

He doubled the stakes with the Louvre Pyramid. His intention was to bring in the cash and to entice museum goers.

He succeeded both times.

In present-day Manhattan there has been a boom of tall skinny buildings a new piece of territory called Billionaire’s Row –some on plots only 13 meters wide- the tallest soaring to 472 meters making it the highest residential building in the world on.

All in all they are not an eyesore, but they have shifted the focus from “Hey! This is where I keep my money” (Bank of China) to “Look! I am the money”. Also consider they cast giant shadows on Central Park –the heart and most beloved open space of New York City- so that main areas are plunged into shadow early in the day and to boot many of the buyers are just investors parking their money for safety. This goes contrary to the idea of the multi-culture, creative, interactive polis that has always been this vibrant city. Inside New York there is a village too.

The new tall skinnies will house a lot of new wealth, but will add nothing to its soul; that high-end real estate in New York City has gone down 40% says something about the dangers of hubris*.

Speaking of which I recently came across a projected de luxe residential high-rise in my hometown of Lima, Peru-located in the best part of town, of course- which takes greed, conceit and bad taste to a whole new level.

Probably comes with a hefty amount of hubris too.

Aside from a hard-to-swallow pastiche of Versailles-camp, the Boboli Gardens and Villa d’Este, with whiffs of fascist or Stalinist architecture -hard to tell which- money rules. The scale is meant to make man feel small and inconsequential.

Water-sprouting fountains in a city which has almost none and topiary everywhere better suited for French chateaux; pretentious, tacky and wrong.

Wrong for the city, the culture and the people especially the people. In a country with rampant unemployment, systemic poverty, malnutrition, lack of running water and good schools, not to mention second-hardest hit country by Covid, this is a slap in the face.

This is seriously courting hubris or disaster. I guess their marketing team must have detected a cluster of one-percenters willing to dish out First World money and take a condo, or two, off their hands.

Personally I would be embarrassed to ask taxi to drop me there; I would probably lie and tell him to leave me on a side street.

Big is not bad. Not when it puts man first, not his money.

Take the Acropolis. An alerted reader sent me a short video of the new light show for the Parthenon; truly amazing. It makes you feel good, a better man or woman, because it speaks to the mind and the spirit.

Diogenes, who said “artificial expansion is incompatible with happiness”, sat naked inside his barrel on the side of the road.

Alexander the Great approached him and told him, “I am the most powerful man in the world. Ask me whatever you want, anything, and you shall have it”.

The Greek philosopher answered,

“Please move away. You are blocking my sun”.

*Hubris: an act that defies the gods.