Gated Communities are Dangerous.
San Gimignano is a beautiful old hilltop walled town on the standard tourist route for visitors to Tuscany. Its claim to fame is the towers that predominate which competing families built in Mediaeval times, whilst the town itself was in frequent conflict with other towns and cities around it. Today it is a tourist curiosity.
I was reminded of this over the last couple of days as I stayed in leafy Surrey with friends. It is a beautiful if heavily overcrowded part of the world, full of costly houses characterised by security fences and gated communities, built around a town centre that looks like many others - cheap supermarkets, charity shops, and boarded up businesses. The dynamics become apparent in the morning as people move from their gated and guarded communities to their gated and guarded offices in London, bypassing the town centre. It reminded me of San Gimignano.
When we make money the lowest common denominator, we judge everything on its ability to offer …
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Outside the Walls to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.