Urban challenges arise from the inevitable complexity and dynamism of cities
Cities are where most of us live and are the settings for the full range of human activity. Cities are the places where we work and travel, where we sleep and play, where we love and learn, sing and listen, where we fight and laugh and forge our futures. Cities are physical, made from buildings and roads and infrastructure; they are economic, made from money and trade and business; they are social, made from households and communities. They are environmental, processing waste and consuming energy and providing habitats for plants and animals. And they are psychological, too, made from memories and histories and art and aspiration.
As a ‘world city’, London is merely the largest and most complex and most astonishing city in Europe, a place where every conceivable feature of modern society is maximised: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
What challenges does this mean? It means thinking about housing and access; about health and deprivation; about wealth and education, about stress and security, about parks and rivers and offices and tourists and monuments and museums and the Olympics and councils and business and on and on.
Take food. Feeding a city is a challenge. What is the best way of feeding London? Where should the food come from? How should it get here? Who should sell it? What should people buy? How much should they pay? What should they eat? How much food is thrown away? What should we do with the thrown away food?
How do we tackle obesity? How do we provide the food that Londoner‘s need in a way that produces the least possible carbon dioxide? How do we ensure sustainable supply chains? How do we ensure adequate nutrition for disadvantaged families? How do we make sure that London’s food supply is secure?
Pick any issue of urban life, and a list of questions such as this can be generated in moments. In the case of food London is fortunate: the organisation London Food, in partnership with community groups and retailers and markets and the Mayor and others, is trying to tackle these questions. A sustainable city will only come about if the questions are being asked. Over the months ahead, London Remade will be asking more of these questions and engaging in debate about the answers. We shall, perhaps, not wax as lyrical as Moorcock or Eliot, as Sinclair or Ackroyd, but we shall bear in mind the message from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities:
“‘Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspective deceitful, and everything conceals something else.’
‘I have neither desires nor fears,’ the Khan declared, ‘and my dreams are composed either by my mind or by chance.’
‘Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up the walls.’”