Thinking about cities.

Cities are strange places, full of life and often so difficult to live in. The more trendy a city, it seems, the more inhospitable it becomes in so many ways. One third of New Yorkers pay more than 50% of their annual income in rent. Nearly half of New York is living close to the poverty line. In 2009 the top 1% earned more than a third of the city's income. And because it is expensive to do business in New York City, factories, workshops and shipyards have gone elsewhere. It's the same old story. I have these facts from someone called John Freeman writing in today's Guardian. 

John was lucky; an inheritance allowed him to buy an apartment in Manhattan. For some time John Freeman's brother also lived in New York, but as a homeless person. He also writes about life in New York: 55,000 homeless people, including 13,000 homeless families living in New York shelters. That's 23,000 children living life at subsistence level. For various complicated reasons, John Freeman did not invite his brother to live with him. His brother says, "I did not want anyone's help when I was homeless. If a family member had offered to take me in, I probably would have declined the offer." Eventually he moved out of the city to make his life elsewhere. 

All the stuff that is said about New York could probably be said about London as well. The statistics would be different but the message would be the same: a difficult and expensive place to live, And yet I know loads of young people - former students, our son and his friends - who were drawn to the capital city after university and stayed there, declaring that it is the best place to live. And for those fortunate enough to have a decent job, I suppose it is. Mind you, many of those young people, our son included, as they reach the point in their lives when they want to have children, move out of the centre, seeking places close enough to the city to commute but economical enough to enable them to live reasonably well. And they are the lucky ones! 

Yes, cities are odd places. You can have the time of your life or you can be thoroughly miserable and lonely. And we grow attached to them and love them. I know I get quite defensive when people tell me that Manchester is an ugly place. You just need to walk round with your eyes raised a little so that you see the upper parts of the buildings that have not been made into the standard routine city centre with exactly the same shops as every other city in the country. A friend of mine was recently bemoaning the fact that in Barcelona's gothic quarter old traditional shops are being bought up by chain stores. The individual shopkeepers who ran toy shops, bookshops or whatever kind of small business it might be could no longer afford the extortionate rents and had to move to cheaper parts of the city. And so the charm of individual shops with character is replaced with the corporate image of the shops you can visit anywhere. But it's that same thing again: the city is too expensive for the small people. 

Mind you, it could be worse. Instead of moving to another part of the city, you might find your whole city having to move. Kiruna, the most northerly town in Sweden is doing just that. The city, well really a town, I suppose, is largely dependent on a huge iron-ore mine which was founded in 1900. It provides employment and has made the town rich. But now the mine is undermining the city. As the mine follows the seam of iron-ore it is going under the streets and houses and the place is in danger of disappearing into the ground. So they propose to build a new city further south and move everyone lock, stock and barrel. It's that or stop mining. Which would mean that the town would have no reason to be there. You can imagine the consternation. All your memories are tied up in the place where you grew up and these people would have to leave all that behind. 

I wonder though if they might not be better moving south. Kiruna is located 145 kilometres within the Arctic Circle. In the heart of winter they have no daylight and temperatures go down to -15 degrees and below. You wouldn't catch me living there.