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Love in a constantly evolving society.
As our cities progress, so do we as people. But do the lines between public and private life become blurred?
From lonely wanderer of Lincolnshire’s green fields to frequenter of the gentle slopes that make Nottingham; I have become a Public Man.
Richard Sennett in his profound work The Fall of Public Man describes the different realms between public and private life, strangers and friends. Sennett describes the obvious differentiating characteristics that people show while interacting with strangers compared to friends or family. In the City, Sennett argues, the two realms are mixed.
I was intrigued as I had never lived so close to a city before and had never really spent much time wandering about one. I regularly travelled to London for the simple experience of being in a vast urban metropolis and I was always keen to explore these ‘individual districts’ that retained a ‘certain characteristic’ or ‘feeling’. But what I was always immediately struck by was the intense intrusiveness of your fellow man.
From public transport where you are mere inches away from your neighbouring passenger to coffee houses, we are all crammed into small and confined spaces. It is a strange urbanised form of communal living, but anyone familiar with the development of large populaces will know that urbanised environments, although strangely hostile, can act as catalysts to new and remarkable forms of community centred living. But is privacy and space such a meaningless thing to sacrifice so easily in the face of efficient living?
Sennett would argue that privacy is certainly not meaningless. As the title of his work suggests; The Fall of Public Man is the metaphorical decline in separation between private and public life. Our search for the personalisation of the space around us has become entwined with our desire to express ourselves with what would be deemed private matters. Yet today, as socially prolific as we are, how people see us is relevant to the areas we frequent and how these areas represent a small aspect of who we are. This is amplified more so in the city than anywhere else, right down to the buildings that define the streets we use.
Nottingham plays host to an interestingly diverse mixing pot of cultures, as the majority of cities do now. Unique character traits are still hard to come by as the majority of communities within these still newly transformed multicultural hubs still struggle to effectively integrate generations old communities. Cities therefor tend to be defined by architectural differences and small, individually unique qualities.
According to Sennett, architecture has a huge role to play in defining a cities mood. The design of public spaces is as important as the design of work spaces; clever designs encourage certain moods that impact on the collective mind set. Nottingham, like other cities in the UK, retains its traditional buildings from architects like Thomas Cecil Howitt and Thomas Chambers Hine. In comparison, institutions like Universities tend to promote the modern attempts on abstract spaces, promoting a greater emphasis on natural light and open floor spacing which, in a small way, encourages that social interaction between its inhabitants that the general City fails to do.
Housing shortages and a relaxing in planning laws have led to more of Britain’s green fields being slowly developed into living space for our expanding population. Country style living, as sci-fi authors have all agreed upon, will no longer exist; or be treated as a luxury saved only for those who can afford the space to plant it. As the globalization of transport and multiculturalism continues to shape the future of civilisation, our cities will have to expand. And as Sennett argues, cities accumulate our society’s most precious cultural qualities. They act as examples of real footprints in history, how we live defines a working populaces place in history. We will all eventually become, Public People.
And as Sennett argues, cities accumulate our society’s most precious cultural qualities. They act as examples of real footprints in history, how we live defines a working populaces place in history. We will all eventually become, Public People.