Thought for the Day No. 6: Walls and Ring-roads

This is the seed of a larger essay on the nature of modern cities.

In multitudinous days passed of political uncertainty, distributed political authority, and armies without air-power, cities built great walls to protect their citizens' lives and capital, and to increase the income of the local government. This act of ownership marked them off from the countryside, and so symbolised a distinct mode of life. Today our cities build ring-road highways for much the same purpose and with much the same symbolism. The fortifications of the past are grand, familiar, and local, and the men who walked them watched the land. The fortifications of the present are rarely more than brute, distant, and identical, and the people who drive along them watch only the road ahead.

Boothman Bar, one of four great gatehouses of the city of York