Gathering 'round the fire...

In the country, you have to build a large family to gather. But it's not a consensual gathering - you were brought there by your parents. They love you, but do they understand you? Sometimes it works. Sometimes the gathering scatters to the four winds, and all is lost.

We have created a new kind of gathering, like and yet unlike the campfire. In the great cities, we have places that we can go. The oxygen that feeds their fires is people, the minds of people who want to be together. It's beyond consent - a good place is a flue that draws us in, keeps us warm, spits us out again happy and refreshed.

This is the city. The great genius of the modern city is its density. The denser it is, the more oxygen there is, the more beauty can be created, the more who can enjoy it. When we smash the city and smear it across the landscape, it loses its power. We can try to glue it together, with energy, but it's never as good.