The Sleepwalk of the West

How big is the Good Society? What is human-scale – and are our cities within it? Success – as it prevails in the material urban mind – is a measure of one’s ability to deny the city. There are various ways the rich do this: in secondary country houses; in pleasantly expensive tree-lined oases, in the “exclusive” (note its shameless literal meaning) silence of penthouses.

The tenet of liberalism is freedom of the individual; everyone should be free to “be themselves”. Appealing – from the individual’s viewpoint. But whether it’s necessarily a basis for living together is less clear. What if your “being yourself” prevents my “being myself”? If your cultural norms imply a curb on my cultural norms, what does liberalism offer to help resolve our conflict?

As the British National Party edges ever further into our dimmed conscience, the political and media classes are in a rare nervous state. For there’s something big lurking beneath the easy abuse, something hidden in the righteous hand-wringing. The real question is this: what do we mean by national? Kipling wrote: Winds of the World, [...]

The Al Fath Mosque on Rue des Poissonniers in Paris receives thousands for Friday prayer, way beyond its capacity. The surrounding streets are entirely given over to worshippers. Around the corner is the vast church of St Bernard de la Chapelle, whose doors appear to be permanently padlocked. Amongst local proposals is that of converting [...]

A headline to stop you in your tracks: US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive. The article is mostly about Flint – the poorest city on the US: “The obsession with growth is sadly a very American thing. Across the US, there’s an assumption that all development is good, that if [...]