London - The World's Capital
By Dan Burden

These past eight days I settled into London, England. The London Experience was my greatest learning experience, as it should have been. This journey was packed with more teachings about city life, city making, street making, placemaking, history, the future, than I could have imagined. I now know and respect why this visit came for me at an age that would allow me to comprehend its fullness richness and complexities. At age 64, having trekked through 2500 towns … having readied myself working with some of the best designers and achievers in the world … I was ready for London. And London, it appears, was ready for me.

My new friend from London based, Hyder Consulting, Robert Ravelli, said something profound to me on our afternoon walk Saturday. At the time we were mixing in and out of shoulder-to-shoulder bumps and touches with humanity. “With 1 Million more people expected to arrive in the next 20 years many correctly call London "The World's Capitol."  The setting we were in made me take notice. We were walking through the Borough Market, nestled under a railroad track, with thousands of people, sensing smells of rich complexity -- this visual and olfactory mix heightened our senses. Moments later we walked through a crowded plaza into a great church cathedral and heard music that spanned time.

Despite the British government's desire to spread the new money that keeps flowing into London to other parts of England, it seems that everyone, from Russia, the Middle East, South America, Africa, India, Pakistan, China, all of Europe .... People want to live in this historic-to-modern, bustling, “rub up against the shoulders of the world” city. London is a place that celebrates tolerance and creativity like no other. It is a city that is openly diverse. It is at the heart of the future of any great city, large, medium or small … It is what Richard Florida, author of "The Rise of the Creative Class" and “The Flight of the Creative Class is talking about. London is Mecca for changing the world to a better, more human, more humane place.

London houses many things ...  the great Universities, the great publishing houses, great cathedrals and museums of every size and scale. London is a place of great streets, great bridges, great buildings, great monuments and plenty of great moments.... London brings into one place all of what humanity dreams and strives for. It concentrates these varied ideas and perspectives and wants. It is a giant mixing bowl mixing up people and their ideas. It churns out new ideas, and it puts new ideas to the test. 

London’s attractiveness as a world city makes it a good place to anchor money, to start new businesses, new lives. It has lifestyle ranges from simple and basic to off-the-charts exotic urban homes. It is a city where people are passionate about being in a city. It is a celebration of all world cultures; its markets are abundant and diverse in their makeup … the shopping, the friendliness, the history, the system of streets, transit, parks, entertainment …  everything seems to keep this city growing ... nothing, absolutely nothing, appears to have bounds.

Imagine this ….. New York has 5 boroughs ... London has 33.  One of these neighbourhoods is Fitzrovia. I stood alone in an overly quiet plaza (Whitfield Gardens) in Fitzrovia. This place was on one of my 7 walks that day into different boroughs. I read through 17 separate colorized monuments ... about what thingsin history occurred within walking distance of this place, just off Tottenham Court Road, centered on Goodge and Gower Streets. The plaza was hidden from most people, behind a small restaurant ... yet it was a great plaza. The tablets are shaped in hour-glass form and one sees “history” drip through to mingle with images of today and the sky cranes building tomorrow. The “monuments” told where John Wesley and the other founders of Methodism had their start, where slavery was fought, where anesthesia for an operation was first used, where Darwin lived, where dozens of great writers, including Charles Dickens spent their childhoods or otherwise energized their pens, where radicals like Karl Marx lived, where women’s suffrage was given birth, where 5000 of the most influential people in the world of their time left their autographs. The list goes on and on. And this public space is only one tiny plaza in one tiny place in time in London. For such a tiny place it “talks” with endless reams about how streetmaking and placemaking work together to create settings inspiring new ideas, new stories for history. 

With the challenges we all face in building a new world where we learn to harness the best ideas for new buildings, new streets, using new town making platforms, London gives us a start. Working together we will find new ways to conserve energy, to individually lighten our carbon footprints, to supply the needs of more with less, to address peace through conversation and radical discussions, to prevent having to undertake a new war. London provides new ways to mix ideas and sprinkle them widely over the world canvas. London is a great place at a time to spawn our most creative energies. London for me is a place fueling optimism for the future of the world.

In no small way, London will play a big role if the world is to survive. And if London and its teachings are not taken seriously, it is here that we will look back in time to the potential of our hopes and dreams to have taken us to a better place.