The poem of urban choreography

Our late second millennium cities swell daily; as the press of the residents' and visitors' bodies grows, so the sense of an underlying meaning to their movements diminishes, is lost in the apparent mob and rabble. But find a high place - an office-block or bell-tower - and look down over the surging world; then, the hidden order reveals itself.

First you are amazed that all these precarious human tops stay upright. You watch their forms change; as they move directly beneath you, these long and spindly beings compact themselves into small, sliding creatures with enormous heads, flowing freely over the surface of the earth. Then you begin to see the patterns.  Each pavement conducts two opposing streams, their strands constantly interweaving. The dynamics of open spaces are more complex: bunches of people progress like spongy billiard balls, groups that meet, mingle, re-form and move off. Other stationary huddles suddenly shatter, scattering their personal fragments.

It is a hypnotic sight. From up there you begin to feel as the gods must, looking down from on high at the tiny people. You see the larger scheme, the origin of the mysterious forces curving people's paths and lives. You see for the first time a huge, graceful urban choreography.

To pick out the other players in this ballet, you need, ideally, a helicopter.  As you rise over the city, above the spire and skyscraper, the human scale vanishes; the people and their patterns are lost.  But another emerges.  The cars, hitherto simply defining the street boundaries of the human realm, now become foregrounded; you see them as dancers in their own right, following their own score, different from that of the pedestrians, but equally rich, and counterpointing it subtly.

The traffic coalesces into long, wavering, metal ribbons, the individual cars rows of pearls on invisible threads which criss-cross the city like a vast cat's cradle. The urban surface becomes alive, as if a million beads of mercury were caught by hidden magnetic lines.

This revelation of the cars' ordered movement is even more surprising than that of the people.  Ten times their weight in metal careers along at ten times their speed, each object just feet from its fellows, cutting across paths with a military precision.

We take this constant pulsing flow of traffic for granted, and are shocked when it ceases, when the magic breaks down.  The instant an accident happens - two cars crash or nick each other - everything grinds to a halt.  Pedestrians stop and stare; other drivers crane their necks, stop and get out of their motors.  Worse, the cars act like camels: the sight of a dead or dying vehicle seems to induce death in others; more crashes occur as people avoid or are distracted by the first one.  Soon terminal gridlock, that transportational thrombosis, threatens the city which already teeters along a knife-edge of barely-matched infrastructural supply and demand. It is only when it stops that we become fully aware of this great choreographic poem that surrounds us; only when it stops that we appreciate the necessity of our skilful participation.

(31.10.89)

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