The Scientific paradigm is admittedly weak on the concepts of soul and spirit - but we wish to examine both in our consideration of London as a lifeform.
On one level, a city such as London is ‘merely’ a three-dimensional exercise in architecture - or perhaps sculpture.
However, there is an undeniably organic quality to any city; it adheres to most of the definitions of ‘life’. Indeed, few would refuse to accept that (even if only in metaphor) London is alive; it moves; it changes form; it courses; it throbs; it cycles - and it may one day die.
Poets have always believed that every city has its own rhythm, its own pulse, its own personality, all in transcendence of the multiplicity of lives living within - assuming there is a ‘within’ to speak of.
In summary: the city is clearly an artificial life form . It sees and hears. Perhaps it can be said to have thoughts as well, even a consciousness, perhaps even a soul inhabiting its electric and fibre-optic nervous system, something which is more than a gestalt of many humans, and far more than a mere collection of buildings.
The Consensus apparently supports this view; the city is often portrayed in drama as being alive, as having autonomous identity. The animation of the city is especially noticeable in film noir; It is within this famous genre that the city comes to be portrayed as being quite (literally) alive - and often malevolent.
In film noir the city ceases to be merely the stage or the setting; it plays a part itself - often the dominant part. In quintessential film noir such as Night and the City (1950), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Cry of the City (1948), and The Naked City (1948), the ‘modern’ metropolis is a disturbing entity (the actual antagonist, as these titles suggest) and a dark, frightening shadow-world of danger and corruption. The city is a force which is at once everywhere and nowhere, tangible and intangible. It is spectral. It cannot be confronted. There is, in effect, nothing to fight. The city is an ‘experience’ - an unpredictable force which is beyond the control of any mortal.
If a city (such as London) is not under our control, we must ask a question. How can we coexist with it? Escape to some pre-urban or even pre-industrial paradise seems both implausible and incompatible with Scientific experimentation. Should we accept that survival can be achieved by the simple act of resignation, a simple act of acquiescence.? Should the city dweller submit to being architecture, thereby surrendering all vain and misguided hopes of autonomy and/or personal space?
Such decisions are beyond the scope of a short article. Let us leave you once again with the poets.
“There is no impenetrable space any more, no place left for even the soul to hide away. Sanity comes with release, with a closing of the eyes, and with a growing of antennae.”
