Cities have historically been places of opportunity. A unique meeting space. Chances of access to jobs, culture, and maybe, just maybe, luck. However, many modern metropolises have ceased to take care of their citizens. More and more people are looking for a more peaceful life. The security of owning your own apartment is also worth mentioning.
In the face of global urban change, Martin Heidegger warned against the “inauthentic and uprooted life of the city.” in build, live, think He argued that the transformation of mere accommodation into a real residence was possible only in the countryside. Many families today agree with the German thinker that compassion was fundamental to living. When will they stop taking care of the city? What if their leaders stop investing in public facilities and spaces? When are public assets sold? When do they prefer decorations over a tree? Or when they don’t have the ability to provide shelter for the people who live there?
Heidegger believed that human habitation meant saving the earth. But be careful: “Saving the Earth does not mean making it our subject and taking ownership of it.” That is why he associated the abuses being committed against nature with the forgetting of our roots, the disregard for our traditions. This is important. It is also easy to be misunderstood. Protecting the roots does not mean becoming conservative, it means becoming radical. Is that what people rebuilding their lives in the countryside are looking for? Shortly after breaking away from the Nazi Party, Heidegger moved to the countryside from his bourgeois two-story house with a garden on the outskirts of Freiburg. He built a new shelter of just 40 square meters in Germany’s Black Forest. cabin.
We’ve seen it there. Several photographs taken in 1968 show the philosopher and his wife Elfriede inside it. They are old now. They put water on the fire to prepare tea. He wrote that one is born like many others, one dies like others, and it is one who becomes or ultimately becomes that person at the end of one’s life. These photos show that while contact with nature creates humility, craftsmanship puts humans back at the center of the world. They also expect photography to be an art form that seeks substance in appearance. In Heidegger’s hut, the white tablecloths were embroidered and laurel wreaths were painted around the ceramic plates. On the table was a vase with fresh flowers. Both he and Elfriede had serious expressions. In pictures reflecting his life in the countryside, the philosopher wore a suit and tie. Do we need to disconnect from the world in order to reconnect with ourselves?
It is interesting to observe when and how each of us perceives himself as natural. The pandemic has shown us that it is not about valuing nature or valuing it as an all-powerful being. Perhaps we will come closer to understanding that nature will remain on earth even if we disappear. Perhaps this quest for naturalness is the spirit that inspires those who can afford to telework and leave the city for the countryside.
While it is best not to underestimate the harshness, carelessness, lack of infrastructure, and loneliness of the countryside, this ambitious escape from today’s cities is inextricably linked to the harsher aspects of exile. Unrestrained speculation, far more powerful than the welfare state, had to come, leaving thousands of citizens unable to afford to rent or buy housing in the city. Needless to say, without a roof and a bed, there is no possibility of working, staying and thriving in a big city.
This dual scenario of flight and exile to reach the countryside is thus in contrast to the era when small worker towns were built to house workers. It took place in the Illinois suburbs of Chicago at the end of the 19th century. Charles Pullman invented the sleeper car, train travel with all sorts of comforts. And he didn’t want unpleasant workers. He had a model city built for his factory workers. He called her…you know?Pullman.
Something along these lines of paternalistic care also occurred in the 300 towns of the Spanish colony, which were built on barren land during the dictatorship with a modernity rooted in strict Mediterranean traditions. The few towns that survive today continue to have exemplary architecture. There is also the paradox that harsh working conditions have arisen within a modern framework with the intelligence to update tradition.
It is therefore worth asking whether leaving the city is a necessity, a realistic possibility, or an exception. Who can do it and under what conditions? Who ends up in the countryside and who gets kicked out of the city?And the culmination of that is, if we leave the city…in whose hands, or in what hands, will we leave the city?
The city-country-periphery route has been a round trip throughout history. The colonization of expanded territory occurred with the destruction of medieval walls. At the same time, however, some people left precarious jobs in the countryside and sought the safety of urban commerce and industry. Even if in the city center everything is small and smelly, in the first periphery you can breathe.
The formula was a classic, although it has now changed with some condominiums being converted into bunker districts. The further you go from the center, the more airflow there is and the cheaper the price per square meter, but…it takes longer to get there. That formula outlined the expansion of American cities. In the United States, cars have made traveling more comfortable without relying on public transportation, which continues to be in short supply. In Latin America, it was more economical to build expansive cities than tall, dense cities. The problem with this expansionist urbanism arises when gas prices rise, when many cars are no longer allowed to circulate in cities, and when public transportation is so poor that workers have to spend four hours a day getting from home to work.
In recent decades, Spain has witnessed the hollowing out of its cities, with Bilbao being the leading example. And to its gradual naturalization, with Vitoria, Barcelona and Pontevedra as our guide. Neighborhoods that have known how to take advantage of the green topography of Barcelona Nou Barris, the areas around Madrid, and Bilbao have established a neighborhood way of life that has almost disappeared in today’s urban centers. Indian urban planner Suketu Mehta wrote, “Shudder when an art gallery appears on your street.” He was talking about gentrification, the selling or leasing of downtown apartments to the highest bidder, resulting in the disappearance of a neighborhood’s traditional residents. Gentrification is usually followed by commodification, where people buy homes as investment assets rather than to live in. Its perverted monopoly ends up emptying the city center of its inhabitants at a time when the city is at its most beautiful. Who would want to live in an empty city? Who could do that? Perhaps they are just tourists who joined in to turn Europe’s historic center into a kind of historical theme park.
Whether you live in the countryside or the city, it is very difficult to be happy. The paradox is that there are many signs that life in the countryside can only be comfortable if you are not dependent on it. And people living in cities are beginning to suffer the same fate. I never thought of writing about politics in the decoration section. But William Morris did it when the industry that was trying to give us all the work turned quantity into quality. And he traded the honest mistakes of craftsmanship for the perfection of factory-produced plastic.
Because it is so difficult to rent an apartment for several generations, we may have mythologised housing and forgotten that the intimate and the uncomfortable coexist inside the house. Will the countryside be saved? Or, again, is it better to look inward instead of trying to find a solution outside? Aesop wrote that the rabbit did not read or enjoy the scenery. She also never let her guard down and was always worried about being the first to arrive. Although it seems to depict city life, the difference is that rabbits have always lived in the countryside.
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