5 June 2011

Complexity & contradiction

Overcast, slightly chilly 25 minute run, reflecting mainly on the excellent 1953 film, Tokyo Story.

More people now live in cities than not. Tokyo has a population of over 13 million. Shanghai has 18 million, and there are 32 million people living in and around the city of Chongqing in SW China – that’s over half the population of the UK, or the entire population of Canada. 

Cities vie with each other to have the tallest building, or the most fashionable architecture, as they seem to have done for thousands of years, as they peddle an endless narrative of material “success”. Behind that narrative though, all cities are vast & complex organisms in a constant state of growth and decay, which could and probably should be seen as some type of primitive, self-replicating life form. And as with people, the full story is an overlaid and interwoven combination of many many narratives, light and dark.





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