28 July

Cities are remarkable in a way I only recently came to understand. Throughout all of history humans have struggled to find ways to live together, without violence and death. That’s because humans relating only to other humans creates rivalry, which I post about a lot here. But then humans started to build cities. And what’s unique to cities isn’t the humans in them. It’s the vast material infrastructure, which makes them unmistakably cities. We think of that material infrastructure only as ‘services’ for us humans, and buildings, and transport etc. But it’s much more amazing than that. Every single piece of material infrastructure in a city is a negotiated settlement between humans, on some matter. For example a footpath is a negotiated compromise between the needs of walkers, drivers and homeowners. Reticulated water and sewage systems are negotiated compromises for how to deal with water and waste. Etc. Once the material infrastructure is in place, humans no longer need to negotiate these things. Societies get more peaceful. The city is history’s way of solving how to allow humans to live together relatively peacefully, indefinitely. All of their rivalries get embedded in material objects. Technologies. That’s why cities are both packed full of people, and ‘infrastructure’. One reason I love working in local government is that you’re right at the front-line of this building-out of the foundations of civilised society. The basic ‘services’ are really tools to create peaceful, complex societies. They suppress fights. That’s my every day, dealing with fights between people, and helping install infrastructure (in every sense of the word) to suppress those fights. Humans will never, ever agree or stop fighting. But divert those disagreements into material things and technologies, and the fights stop. Also why most people despise local government. It constantly gets in the way of their real desire, to fight and argue with their neighbours. You may think that’s an exaggeration. I invite you to spend a day with your local Council. Their job is to stop people fighting, mostly by installing ‘infrastructure’ that diverts the disagreements.