Which town?

I was born and lived the first years of my childhood in the capital city of France, Paris, and the street where we had our home, on the 6 th floor of a building similar to all its neighbors, rue Henri Monnier, which ascended the hill towards Place Pigalle, sheltered as well probably up to three thousand individual inhabitants. We were neither rich nor very poor; this was not a wealthy area and one would meet and move amidst a great diversity of classes, ethnic origins, as well as “trades”; but the pavements were clean, water flowed from all the taps on all the storeys and electricity was lighting all the rooms and no one was really worried about anything, in a civic sense, beyond one’s ability to pay the monthly bills. There were of course, now and then, a drunkard collapsed on the curb, a woman slapped, some loud exchange of choice invectives, a burst bottle,, a quarrel at the grocer’s, and the sounds of police or ambulance sirens, but the proper functioning of all the parts necessary to the everyday life seemed to be ensured. While in our nascent town we are preoccupied practically with each and every action and gesture and their consequences, in a constant search for harmonious solutions that could contribute to recover the health of all the organic systems of the earth – this earth that has been savaged and ransacked and violated and harmed by our arrogance and our excesses.

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In terms of the progress and evolution of consciousness – this consciousness incarnated so far by humanity -, what is the use of a city?

What are its functions, its role, its virtues?

What are the powers, the effects and the possibilities that a city alone can generate, trigger and activate?

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