Paul Swagerman

A city is like a country with many provinces. But the map of its diversity is constantly changing shape and colour, as national and global pressures create waves of migration that flow through cities like a blush across a cheek.

Migrants have always been essential to the success of cities. The unique dynamism and creativity found in cities stems in great part from their cultural and ethnic diversity.

Our global cities may well be the world’s economic engines, but they are increasingly divided.

gpsreplay on Flickr.

We lived in villages, then cities, and now online.

Lorzing takes the reader on a walk, an exploration of selected landscape-related material, the kind of walk in which the most important things are the pleasures of map reading and getting mud on your boots. The guide is experienced and describes his observations in the greatest detail.

I enjoyed the size of Tokyo and the freedom it gives you to be yourself. In a city with 36 million people, no one tries to force you into a certain way of living.

And yet to be succesful a city has to be open to continuous development, free to evolve and grow with the demands of new times. Like science fiction accounts of the future, ideal cities quickly become outmoded.