The future of the city in the moral maze
On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, we discussed whether there was a moral duty to rescue the city from the blight that has descended upon it as a result of the pandemic.
Is the city the jewel in the crown of a civilisation, or would it be better to live in smaller towns and villages? Does a city bring us together, with high density living forcing us to get along with each other and broadening our minds by making us encounter people from different backgrounds and cultures, or does it engender loneliness and anomie?
My co-panellists were Giles Fraser, Tim Stanley and Mona Siddiqui. Our guests were Richard Burge, chief executive of the London Chamber of Commerce; Paul Chatterton, professor of the urban future at the university of Leeds; Tom Cheesewright, “applied futurist”; and Dr Jonathan Rowson, director of the Social Brain Centre at the Royal Society of Arts.
You can listen to the show on BBC iPlayer here.
