The Soul of the Suburb, Forging Urban Identity Through History and Celebration

“ The air, too, is tempered and softened; there are numbers of pretty places, with their spreading grounds, old trees, and older villas. Those persons who have been fortunate enough to secure ground here in good time are to be envied. The curious part is that it is bounded all round by the most uninviting prosaic districts—on one side by the frowsy Notting Hill Gate, on the other by the common high road to Hammersmith, all crowded with omnibuses and carts. But ascend the gentle hill, from whatever direction, and you find yourself puzzled by the antique simplicity and suburban air of the place. ”

“ Why should they be commonplace? Why should they be absurd? Why should it be grotesque to say that a pillar-box is poetic when for a year I could not see a red pillar-box against the yellow evening in a certain street without being wracked with something of which God keeps the secret, but which is stronger than sorrow or joy? Why should any one be able to raise a laugh by saying 'the Cause of Notting Hill'?—Notting Hill where thousands of immortal spirits blaze with alternate hope and fear. ”

“ Nature puts on a disguise when she speaks to every man; to this man she put on the disguise of Notting Hill. Nature would mean to a poet born in the Cumberland hills, a stormy sky-line and sudden rocks. Nature would mean to a poet born in the Essex flats, a waste of splendid waters and splendid sunsets. So nature meant to this man Wayne a line of violet roofs and lemon lamps, the chiaroscuro of the town. He did not think it clever or funny to praise the shadows and colours of the town ”

“ It is in a special sense London’s living memorial of the great Lexicographer. Amid the changes which have altered Fleet Street almost beyond recognition by the Doctor and his contemporaries, it stands safe still, its old activities in full swing in the narrow backwater of Wine Office Court, a venerable reminder of the past. That men should be possessed with an unwearying curiosity about the old tavern which was so much the haunt of the mighty literary potentate who was the patron and friend of Goldsmith, is but natural. They feel for it what the devotee feels for a shrine. ”

“ Most modern cities have lost the peculiar characteristic of individuality which we can observe in cities of Renaissance Italy, of Medieval Europe, of Greece, and of Mesopotamia. In these counties the physical existence of the city is but an outward sign of close communal affinities which dominate the life of every dweller within the walls. The city sets its citizens apart from the other inhabitants of the land. It determines their relations with the outside world. It produces an intensified self-consciousness in its burghers, to whom the collective achievements are a source of pride. ”

“ Its history plays an exceedingly large rôle in advancing or retarding community development. History and tradition are the memory of the community; they bring to mind its past experiences. Common ancestors and common participation in important events in the past give a sense of identity and heighten community consciousness. Pride in the history of the community is like pride in a good family, and is a strong factor in maintaining the standards of its people. ”

“ Then there grow up slums which are inhabited by great numbers of the poorer classes who are unable to defend themselves from association with the derelict and vicious. In the course of time every section and quarter of the city takes on something of the character and qualities of its inhabitants. Each separate part of the city is inevitably stained with the peculiar sentiments of its population. The effect of this is to convert what was at first a mere geographical expression into a neighborhood, that is to say, a locality with sentiments, traditions, and a history of its own. ”

“ It is not these things, superadded characteristics, negligible details, which cause one to cry or to laugh—which mark the difference between town and town. It does not matter how one sees a town—but how one feels it, the soul, the meaning, the reason of it.
And one can feel New York as one can feel no other town—not even London. ”

“ The fact is, however, that the city is rooted in the habits and customs of the people who inhabit it. The consequence is that the city possesses a moral as well as a physical organization, and these two mutually interact in characteristic ways to mold and modify one another. It is the structure of the city which impresses us by its visible vastness and complexity, but this structure has its basis, nevertheless, in human nature, of which it is an expression. ”

“ A little gust of wind brew through the night, and then the first voice answered—
"But in this world there are some, be they wise or foolish, whom nothing intoxicates. There are some who see all your disturbances like a cloud of flies. They know that while men will laugh at your Notting Hill, and will study and rehearse and sing of Athens and Jerusalem, Athens and Jerusalem were silly suburbs like your Notting Hill. They know that the earth itself is a suburb, and can feel only drearily and respectably amused as they move upon it." ”

“ The idea is taken seriously by the second hero, Adam Wayne of Notting Hill, an enthusiast utterly lacking any sense of humour, who goes to war with the other boroughs of London to protect a small street which they have designed to pull down in the interests of commercial development. Pimlico, Kensington and the rest attack Notting Hill. Men bleed and die in the contest and by the magic of the sword the old ideas of local patriotism and beauty in civic life return to England. ”

“ John’s Church, Notting Hill, being the spot on which the grand stand had been erected, and the course as nearly as I can describe is now covered by Clarendon Road, Cornwall Road, Portobello Road, Horbury Terrace and Ladbroke Square. I found that the inhabitants had insisted upon a right of way across the grounds, and taking the law into their own hands, with hatchets and saws had removed the barriers and thus by maintaining their right to cross the ground when they pleased caused the racing men to abandon it. ”

“ While townsmen were forced at every turn to discover and justify the limits of their privileges, or while controversies raged among them as to how the government of the community should be carried on, there was no lack of political teaching; and all questions “touching the great commonalty of the city” for whose liberties they had fought and whose constitution they had shaped, stirred loyal citizens to a genuine patriotism. ”

“ There is not even a city wall remaining from the past, nor so much as a broad outer street, delimiting what may still be noble and permanent from these hopeless suburbs. Little scraps of what were once happy and united villages still stand like islands in this flood of mean brick. For the most part they are to be distinguished no longer save by the narrowness and crookedness of their streets, [Pg 34] and when at last one comes to the inner part, where there is something of history and of meaning and of an inherited culture, one comes upon it without introduction and without grace. ”

“ The easy means of communication and of transportation, which enable individuals to distribute their attention and to live at the same time in several different worlds, tend to destroy the permanency and intimacy of the neighborhood. On the other hand, the isolation of the immigrant and racial colonies of the so-called ghettos and areas of population segregation tend to preserve and, where there is racial prejudice, to intensify the intimacies and solidarity of the local and 10neighborhood groups. ”

“ Considering that a pluralist and genuinely democratic society should not only respect the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of each person belonging to a national minority, but also create appropriate conditions enabling them to express, preserve and develop this identity ”

“ In this sense, a government that pursues the cultural assimilation of minorities is a “cultural nation”; cultural unity is seen as the foundation for a strong nation-state ( [90] , p. 561) . The differences between the cultural and ethnic nation model is that “cultural nations” encourage assimilation whereas “ethnic nations” do not, because the latter concept demarcates culture by ancestry and “race”, which cannot be gained or learned by human effort. ”

“ Persons belonging to national minorities have the right freely to express, preserve and develop their ethnic, cultural, linguistic or religious identity and to maintain and develop their culture in all its aspects, free of any attempts at assimilation against their will. ”

“ Many tried it, but they found p. 21they could earn more by labour than they could grow in an acre of the best soil. Close by where the Notting Hill Gate Station now is stood in those days the Village Pump, concerning the removal of which sundry indignation meetings were held and fierce threats made of law proceedings. ”

“ The Peoples’ Charter had its stronghold here, and all radical reforms are sure to find sympathy and support among the People of Nottingham. I should think no equal population in the kingdom would sing “Britons never, never will be slaves,” with more spirit, or, perhaps, with more understanding. Their plucky, English natures became terribly stirred up in the exciting time of the Reform Bill, and they burned down the magnificent palace-castle of the old Duke of Newcastle, crowning the mountainous rock which terminates on the west the elevated ridge on which the town is built. ”

“ We went to the street pageants, we went to the balls at the French Opera House, we saw the masking on the streets, and when the carnival was finished we were finished, too.
The great thing about the carnival, it seems to me, is that it bears the relation to the life of the city, that a well-developed hobby does to the life of an individual. It keeps the city young. It keeps it from becoming pompous, from taking itself too seriously, from getting into a rut. ”

“ From noon onwards in ever increasing numbers the streets were thronged with people. Strangers who had never set eyes on one another before rejoiced together as sisters and brothers. Heedless of rain, and mud, and slush, Londoners turned the city into a carnival of joy. ”

“ The fountains and conduits in the street flowed with red and white wine instead of water; the rich citizens hung silks and cloths of the brightest colours out of their windows to increase the beauty of the show, and threw out gold and silver by whole handfuls to make scrambles for the crowd. In short, there was such eating and drinking, such music and capering, such a ringing of bells and tossing of caps, such a shouting, and singing, and revelling, as the narrow overhanging streets of old London City had not witnessed for many a long day. ”

“ The street was streaked with light and darkness. Cheap bazaars were thronged; shops filled with automatic machines of entertainment were garishly lit; there were butchers’ and greengrocers’ shops open to the air, blazing with color under electric and naphtha lamps; there were stalls in the road, barrows of artificial flowers; white kinematograph houses; terra-cotta music-halls and theaters; crimson-tiled and green-brick public-houses; swarms of human beings, talking, laughing, singing, the laughter of excited girls. ”

“ The ramshackle wooden hotels about the square were all hung with flags and paper lanterns, and as Harney and Charity turned into the main street, with its brick and granite business blocks crowding out the old low-storied shops, and its towering poles strung with innumerable wires that seemed to tremble and buzz in the heat, they saw the double line of flags and lanterns tapering away gaily to the park at the other end of the perspective. The noise and colour of this holiday vision seemed to transform Nettleton into a metropolis. ”

“ The city's great holiday is the Mardi Gras carnival, which is celebrated just before Lent. The keys of the city are then given over to the King of the Carnival, and all day long high revelry holds sway. Brilliant floats, representing scenes of wonderful quaintness and loveliness, parade through flower-garlanded avenues thronged with people who have come from every quarter of the globe. ”

“ Rows and rows of people who are seldom seen at any public function, whole families of those who are certain to be out of town on a holiday, crowded the place to overflowing. The city was at her birthright fête in the persons of hundreds of her best citizens, men and women whose names and lives stand for the virtues that make for honourable civic pride. ”

“ How again could one do otherwise than believe in the prodigies accomplished by solidarity, which renders life so pleasant and makes it a continual festival for one and all, when one attended the happy meetings at the common-house, destined to become the people's royal palace, with its libraries, its museums, its concert-halls, its gardens, and its many diversions? ”

“ And beyond this conscious effort to organize neighborhoods, or rather to help neighborhoods to organize themselves, much spontaneous initiative in both rural and urban communities, springing from the daily needs of the people, is finding neighborhood organization to be the result of concerted effort. Mothers want to learn more of the care of their homes, men want to discuss local improvements, young men and women want recreation, there is a hunger for a wider social intercourse or for some form of community art-expression, music or drama. ”

“ Huge apartment buildings teem with strangers. City blocks teem with strangers. Suburban neighborhoods lie silent because people won't come to a front door to say, "Hi, welcome to the neighborhood."
We start building communities of light by creating friendships and bonds where we live. When we treat neighbors as friends, listen to their problems and concerns, and talk about ways of making things better, then we establish the foundation for a community of light. ”