In response to a growing population and a resultant shortage of housing, it seems that every available space is now being built on in London and the surrounding suburbs. But whenever I see a new development, I always recall what Nietzsche wrote on the subject of high density housing and overcrowded city streets:
"One day, and probably soon, we need some recognition of what above all is lacking in our urban areas: quiet and wide, expansive places for reflection."
We need to build not just shopping centres, apartment blocks, and corporate skyscrapers, but sites free from commerce, traffic, and endless human noise (where good manners would prohibit even the use of mobile phones); public squares, parks and even rooftop fields that would afford men and women the opportunity to step aside, to breathe, and to briefly experience the joy of the vita contemplativa (for like other herd animals, man too is a ruminant).
Places that, as Nietzsche puts it, allow us to take a stroll round ourselves. And so the question is: where are the architects of the future who have the know-how and the vision to create such an environment; a home fit for men and cows.
See: Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 280. Note that I have slightly modified Kaufmann’s translation.
