In a scene from the film, Motorcycle Diaries, (based on the diaries of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara and Alberto Grenada written during a tour of South America), the pair of travellers have reached the mountain-top city of Machu Pichu. Guevara looks down on the ruins and wonders how it is possible that people could have wrecked such a wonderful city only to replace it with someplace like Lima, and the camera shifts from an aerial view of Machu Pichu to one of the modern city.
The ruins certainly have a romance about them, whereas Lima is just a typical, grubby, monotonous, urban sprawl, and I find it easy to sympathise with Guevara’s feelings. On the other hand, modern cities may not be picturesque and romantic, but they do have a very distinctive and unique character. I think of exaggerated caricatures of modern cities as seen in films such as Blade Runner which is all down-town hustle and bustle. Then there is the Privet Drive, suburban world of the muggles in the Harry Potter films, or, even worse, the US version as created for Edward Sissorhands.
Of course, there are the old cities, eg Venice, which are picturesque and easily likable, and although it is decaying, it could be maintained in its antique splendour if the old buildings were replaced, when necessary, by replicas, or near replicas.
Then there is the likes of London, which is just so HUGE. It has an old centre, but it welcomes modernity, so it is becoming a bit of a hotchpotch of old and new. Then away from the centre are all the endless suburbs where they are very fond of framing the doors of small houses with big pillars. The suburbs of the Scottish cities are quite different, much plainer, so you can never mistake which country you are in when you drive through the suburbs of a British city.
I was surprised to find that I actually liked the very modern cities of Toronto and Montreal — I have a particular memory black and gold skyscrapers — and I had my first experience of shopping malls there.
But then there was the drive to the industrial city of Sudbury. I remember the long approach where the trees got smaller and smaller and then disappeared altogether, giving way to a sort of wasteland. This was a particular feature of the side of the city to which the prevailing winds carried the industrial effluence. It might have been cleaned up by now, and it is the kind of thing that would be seen as undesirable and that should be re-planted and greened up, however, it had a really weird atmosphere, sort of other-worldly which it seems a bit of a shame to loose.
I suppose I’m taking a sort of theme-park view of the world: I might not like to live in a lot of these places, but I do like to visit, and I would think the world a poorer place if they were gone.
On the other hand, I do like those post-apocalyptic visions that one sees in films such as Omega Man, I am Legend and Logan’s Run, where the wilderness is moving into and taking over abandoned cities like New York or Washington. So I would be quite pleased to see some big city abandoned and left to nature.
This is a kind of “if I ruled the world……” thread. What would people consider an ideal world would look like? Or maybe just: what is your ideal environment to live in?