Word: beene
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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IT is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London," wrote Henry James in 1881. "It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent." Were he alive today, James, a connoisseur of cities, might easily say the...
Yet despite everything, including itself, the truly great city is the stuff of legends and stories and a place with an ineradicable fascination. After cataloguing the horrors of life in imperial Rome, Urban Historian Lewis Mumford adds, almost reluctantly, that "when the worst has been said about urban Rome, one...
The great city is not necessarily beautiful or well-planned. Venice and Florence are delights to the eye; yet neither has been a great city since the Renaissance. Brasilia, one of the most elaborately designed of modern cities, is also one of the deadliest. An impressive physical setting is essential...
A city governed by birds might be more comfortable than a city governed by men. But it would not be human, nor would it be great; a city is great only in its human associations, confusing as they may be. The ancient Athenians, true urbanites, delighted in the everyday drama...
Like all magic, the attraction of the great city is, in the end, beyond analysis and beyond definition. Marshall McLuhan and the late Frank Lloyd Wright may have been right in arguing that the city should be replaced by smaller communities. But men, alas and thank God, are never strictly...