Future Cities: Shaping Europe from the bottom up

Photo: Pedro Szekely
umbrellas, but when it rained, huge canopies
unfolded to convert streets into arcades.
It imagined a future London that was a cluster of
green villages with artisanal economies and no
modern transport. In a touch of satire, the Houses of
Parliament had been converted into a dung market.
NEW WALLS
“new walls around our cities”. Pointing to Auckland
belt had made its real estate among the priciest in
the world - even though there is hardly a shortage of
land in a country where sheep outnumber people.
is good for people.
The books inspired the “garden city movement” - the
idea that towns should be orderly and utilitarian, but
with natural elements.
capitals”, four cited access to natural places as a
down its old walls in the mid-19th century and
replaced them with broad, leafy avenues, it added a
new element to the European ideal - the green belt,
a strip of undeveloped land engirdling the city.
architecture at Edinburgh University, said that the
instinct shown by the Zaatari refugees is part of the
She said the hormone cortisol is an indicator of
broader hormonal functioning, especially in response
to stress. In healthy people, its levels are high when
they wake up, then fall after half an hour.
When her staff collected saliva from people in
deprived urban areas in Scotland, they found that
cortisol patterns were more distorted in those who
had little access to green space.
14 — FUTURE CITIES OCTOBER 2016