By DiscoMonster
With the mayoral unveiling of …
The Civic Pride, Fully-Inhabited Environment Playlist:
The Imagined Village - Ouses, 'Ouses, 'Ouses
Mala Rodríguez - La Niña
Sharon Redd - Beat the Street
Ice Cube - It Was a Good Day
Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street
The Pogues - Transmetropolitan
Tata Pound - badala
Circle Jerks - Wild in the Streets
Burial - Night Bus
Band Of Holy Joy - I Have Travelled the Buses Late at Night
Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls
Saint Etienne - Finisterre
Chicago - Street Player
Talking Heads - Cities
Stanley Winston - No More Ghettos in America
Bug Central - Nowhere Like Home•
•Bug Central isn’t available for playlisting but can be accessed here:
My favourite song lyrics this week were from Finisterre by Saint Etienne: “Sometimes I walk home through a network of car parks / Just because I can / I love the feeling of being slightly lost / To find new spaces, new routes, new areas.” I like those words because they acknowledge how an urban environment can be disorienting and still an adventure. The songs I’ve chosen aim to reflect the joys and worries, disappointments and pleasures of urban life.
I live in a housing block in Finland. The quality of building is good. The areas are cared for. Everything I need for life is easily accessible. I don’t have a car. I walk or bicycle. I would cycle 22 kilometres to work because the cycle paths are there. I love the differing urban patterns I see.
I love how the urban environment affects me and how I and other people affect it. We all change each other and often for the better. We beat the street.
The playlist begins with The Imagined Village that sings of the shift from an agrarian society to a more urban world. I always find it interesting that people rarely acknowledge the deforestation of the land for agriculture as the first necessary step towards creating an urban society.
But once created an urban centre develops its own personality and lives its own life. It will breathe to its own rhythm. Each urban environment has unique morals, values and way of working.
The identity of urban place and person will often intertwine and take root spreading from household to street to block to district to county, to region, to north, south, east, west. Are y’from this side ot’river or t’other?
People can love urban places for the people, or love the architecture but dislike the community.
People deplore urban areas as too boring, too frightening, inhumane. Then they decry the tough community, the Stepford community, the lack of community, the loss of community, rising prices, people moving out, people moving in. Gentrification or renewal? Urban space for living or non-space for moving through? Whatever! The urban environment should be built with all people in mind, though that is often not the case.
People delight in the anarchy of cities and the freedom they bring while others fear it. Songwriters sing of places they will belong to even when far away. They sing that there’s nowhere like home or no place they would rather live, even when it’s a concrete jungle.
The above songs inspire me somehow. They ignite good and bad memories and emotions. They remind me of things I have seen in the urban environment and how it makes me feel.
Guru’s Wildcard Picks:
Real Lies - North Circular
The Bug - The Missing (feat. Roger Robinson)
These playlists were inspired by readers' song nominations from last week's topic: There goes the neighbourhood: songs about the urban environment. The next topic will launch on Thursday at 1pm UK time.
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