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On Different Ways to See a Place
Looking forward to 2019, Chuck Wolfe reflects on how time living in London — and exposure to many other places during 2018 — has highlighted how the physical shell of the old often frames today’s sociocultural realities around the world.
My time living in London for the last year — as well as exposure to many other places — has highlighted how the physical shell of the old often frames new sociocultural realities. Consequently, amid displacement and gentrification in so many places around the world, we seem to forever debate who owns the city, who should live where, and what urban forms should prevail.
Encountering these heady topics brought me back a few years, when I last thought extensively about the strength and fragility of urban places, and the inherent ironies of surviving town forms.Then, as now, I focused on examples of, and the contrast between, the idea and reality of a place.Then, I asked a more direct question: What happens when the socio-cultural underpinnings for a town are taken away, leaving only the physical form?
In France in 2013, I had just seen a small urban settlement — once called Brovès — that has ceased to exist, other than as a physical, roadside…
