Tag: local authorities
The destruction of culture: a plea to Swansea Council
What makes a city a city? I mean, in the sense of a particular, distinctive city. Its people, certainly, its geography, landscape and architecture, also its economy and politics. But what really sets a city apart from its neighbours is its culture – that network of traditions, customs, institutions and habits, most of them with […]
Weddings, town halls and local democracy
Last weekend our daughter Catrin got married, in Islington Town Hall. It was a fine choice for a wedding. The Town Hall is a large neoclassical building facing the main street, opened in the mid-1920s. The exterior is plain and conventional enough, though its unusually large, long windows suggest an open and welcoming attitude. It’s […]
Is it true that public services can’t cooperate?
Richard Sennett’s Together: the rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation (2012) is one of those books that’s so full of acute observations, surprising examples and novel connections that it stays long in the memory and sparks all kinds of thoughts, months after an initial reading. Sennett is a distinguished US ethnographer, but part of the […]
