Height of cities: July 01, 1996 issue of New Thinking

July 01, 1996 New Thinking:
Height of cities

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July 01, 1996

Height of cities

By Gerry McGovern

We have seen the height of cities in the Western World.

As a child I remember sitting on the pier of our gate on Friday evenings. Around me would be the barking of my pet dogs Spot and Patch, the mooing of our cows, and the chirping of birds.

I was listening for the sound of voices. They were coming home for the weekend. The Murtaghs, Floods, Lees. Home from Dublin city.

Many people don’t live in the city out of choice, but rather out of economic necessity. If economics no longer necessitate they live in a city, then many will make the choice to live in the country.

In a better environment. Clean air. Space to breathe and think. Less crime. More community. A greater closeness to the earth and nature. Not to mention cheaper houses, cheaper food.

Why did cities happen? Did people say: ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be great to live in a slum.’ ‘Wouldn’t it be great to live 40 stories off the ground.’ Did people dream of lives spent in traffic jams and queues?

No. They were pulled to the city by a job on the machines of mass production.

The digital age is no slave to economies of scale and mass production. The magnet to the city is waning, and the pull is now to the countryside. It may take 20/50 years before we see the true impact of this new pull. But have no doubt, it has begun.

Home shopping will boom. Because people will be at home more. People, having left the city, will want to take elements of their lifestyles with them. They will still want to buy their unusual clothes, their CDs. They will still want specialist information and personal banking. They will find many of these things at their local store on the Internet.

Do you drive to work? What do you do on the way? Do you buy a paper, cigarettes? Do you do a bit of banking at lunchtime, and shopping on the way home? Yes, there is an economy at work on the way to-and-from work.

When it is your work that travels and not you, then many of the things that you were used to buying on your daily route will need to start traveling to you -- home shopping.

As a critical mass of people is reached in many country areas, good restaurants, pubs, clothes shops, night clubs, art galleries, will begin to open up.

The tools of short-distance travel will ultimately suffer, as less cars and petrol are bought. Long-distance travel will increase as people visit foreign friends they first met on the Internet, as they go to exotic places they first encountered on the Internet.

I once thought that the city was the place to be. But with the Internet I don’t need the city nearly as much anymore. Soon, I hope to move to an old house with fiber optic cable and a satellite dish. I will be able to gaze out over Loch Gowna and see the forests and Inch island, while I finish a job for an American, South African, German, Australian or Irish company.

Gerry McGovern

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The digital age is no slave to economies of scale and mass production.