The Writings of Ivor Browne: Steps along the road-the evolution of a slow learner

38. Redrawing the City

A SENIOR planner with Dublin Corporation and an Israeli architect have put together an imaginative volume about Dublin to which they have given the interesting title, Redrawing Dublin. It is beautifully produced and asks many questions about the nature of the city, such as ‘Where does your city begin and end?’ They point out that this is a notoriously difficult question. They do not provide many answers and perhaps that is wise. They then open the debate to the general public, again asking a number of questions such as: ‘Would you live in Dublin’s inner city?’ ‘Is Ranelagh urban?’ ‘Is the Phoenix Park underused?’ This discussion was then brought to a public meeting on Bloomsday 2011 and they asked me to comment on the general responses from the public. This was followed by a walkabout through the inner city. In trying to think what I could say at this meeting, it seemed to me that all I could do was to go back to first principles and ask the question: ‘What, as human beings, are our fundamental “needs”?’ This is as distinct from our ‘wants’. Present-day society is full of wants; we are assailed by television advertizing about things we didn’t even know we ‘wanted’ or ‘needed’. In considering this question it is essential to remember that we are not some sort of disembodied cerebral mechanism. We are mammals with the attribute of self-awareness, able from the standpoint of the present to look back on the past and forward to the future. At the same time, we share with other animals the same basic physiology. The primitive part of our brain with all its somatic connections (what Arthur Koestler called ‘the horse brain’) has not changed for at least the past 100,000 years. This still manages all our survival functions: our fight–flight responses, the ability to freeze in the face of overwhelming trauma, and so on. 38. Redrawing the City 496 Our essential needs, then, are few in number but, in my opinion, are absolutely necessary if we are to remain sane and healthy as human beings: 1. Physical needs – oxygen, water, food, shelter, etc. 2. Relationship to the natural environment – vegetation, trees, other animals, etc. 3. Relationship to each other as persons – involving all age groups, the old and the young, and full equality between women and men 4. Relationship to a human-sized community, small enough to allow face-to-face personal relationships and direct contact with nature, thus to make possible the first two criteria above; this implies some new form of neighbourhood or village-type community of manageable human size 5. Direct experience of a spiritual relationship to the Source, the Universal Absolute In my opinion, unless these essential needs are satisfied, while we can continue to survive for a time, it is not possible for us to maintain a sane and healthy existence indefinitely. If this is true for us as adults, how much more vital is it for the young, to ensure their healthy development. I have never forgotten the first time I brought my children to Connemara. They literally rolled about in the grass in sheer joy. This was their first real contact with nature and nobody had to tell them about our instinctive need for this direct feeling of contact with the natural world. One can see the result of our current neglect of these essential needs in the relentless deterioration of society. Each generation is becoming more and more alienated and disturbed, sinking into abuse of alcohol, drugs, crime, violence and suicide, while the selfish lust for power and control by the wealthy continues unabated. In the responses from the public, and even in the book itself, there were a lot of contradictory views and inconsistencies, to the point where one could be forgiven for describing them as schizophrenic. I mean this in the literal etymological sense of the word: to ‘split’ (from the Greek skhizein) and ‘mind’ (Greek phrenos). I feel there are good reasons for this because, on the one hand, there seems to be a tacit assumption and acceptance that globalization, the offspring of neoliberal capitalism, is here to stay – ‘it’s the only game in town’. On the other hand, many of the comments are a plea for more open 497 Redrawing the City space, parks, allotments to grow vegetables and so on, for more spacious...