‘Only a madman would choose to live in a large modern city’
‘Avoid the rush-hour’ must be the slogan of large cities the world over. If it is, it’s a slogan no noe takes the least notice of. Twice a day, with predictable regularity, the pot boils over. Wherever you look it’s people, people, people. The trains which leave or arrive every few minutes are packed: an endless procession of human sardine tins. The streets are so crowded, there is hardly room to move on the pavements. The queues for buses reach staggering proportions. It takes ages for a bus to get to you because the traffic on the roads has virtually come to standstill. Even when a bus does at last arrive, it’s so full, it can’t take any more passengers. This whole crazy system of commuting stretches man’s resources to the utmost. The smallest unforeseen event can bring about conditions of utter chaos. A power-cut, for instance, and exceptionally heavy snowfall or a minor derailment must always make city-dwellers realize how precarious the balance is. The extraordinary thing is not that people put up with these conditions, but that they actually choose them in preference to anything else.
Large modern cities are too big to control. They impose their own living conditions on the people who inhabit them. City dwellers are obliged by their environment to adopt a wholly unnatural way of life. They lost touch with the land and rhythm of nature. It is possible to live such an air-conditioned existence in a large city that you are barely conscious of the seasons. A few flowers in a public park(if you have the time to visit it) may remind you that it is spring or summer. A few leaves clinging to the pavement may remind you that it is autumn. Beyond that, what is going on in nature seems totally irrelevant. All the simple, good things of life like sunshine and fresh air are at a premium. Tall buildings blot out the sun. Traffic fumes pollute lost. The flow of traffic goes on unceasingly and the noise never stops.
