Landscape with figures: the dialogue between people and places
Landscape with figures: the dialogue between people and places
The "crossroads cities" described in the UNESCO Courier earlier this year are places apart. They seem to stand aloof from their immediate surroundings and to concentrate their gaze on distant horizons. The world is their oyster.
In the present issue we see a totally different attitude to place, one in which towns and cities, buildings and works of art are dovetailed closely into their physical setting and bear witness to the two-way relationship between people and the places they live in. We see a tapestry in which the strands of geological time, historical time and eternity have been successfully woven.
The two themes are nevertheless bound by a common thread: the fluctuating relationship between societies and their environment, a relationship that at different times and in different cultures has given rise to a vast spectrum of sometimes contradictory attitudes from the humility of the nomadic herder in the immensity of the desert to the arrogance of the industrialist who regards the whole planet as simply a productive resource.
Here, in a nutshell, is the whole range of human experience.