The title of the first post of this postponed blog sounds a bit cliché but, nonetheless, it's adequate and, furthermore, it is true. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)
Who knows me knows that I'm not a religious person - quite the opposite - but this sentence makes also sense to me. For us The Word is the beginning of all things, The Word is with us and, for me, God can only be God thru us and The Word.
Like God, Cities can only exist thru The Word. Cities and The Word are old friends and almost contemporary [see, for instance, the city of Çatalhöyük (7.500 B.C.), represented with its neighbor twin coned volcano, in the map on the header of this blog]. Without the latter the first would be an impossible enterprise - remember the city of Babel. In this biblical story God confounds the speech of men - their Word - and their city and its tower starts to fall because of their lack of common ground. The Word is crucial to establish a common ground between us, and the materialization of that common ground, its crystallization on the flowing of time, is the city in its multiple forms. The CITY is our COMMON GROUND.
This blog is a thinking out loud about the main interest I have: the city, the most complex artifice men has ever built. It will serve as a vehicle to share my thoughts about the city (the humanized landscape), planning and urbanism in general. Some posts will be more scientific than others; some will just refer to other authors, discussing their work; some will report on present or past and failed or successful experiments, done all-around the world; and some will report on my own experiences or research work I've done.
I hope that in the process of writing and receiving some feedback about it I can learn and we can define more accurately our COMMON GROUND.
