![]() ![]() While the big tree debate might have had its trickier moments, there’s still a whiff of lockdown camaraderie in the air where I live. ![]() Has anything stayed with you since the pandemic? I mean good things – not, say, a persistent cough or several extra kilos. Not good people and bad people – just folk struggling with genuinely difficult choices and learning to accept compromises. It’s about accepting that there will be loss, some disappointment, as we try to do the best we can. Perhaps you can skim this list and know with certainty what’s right and wrong but the nature of hard decisions, especially those concerning the cities we live in – and love – is that often it’s not even about right and wrong. Or how about this debate that happened in Hong Kong? Would you build a towering, small-footprint skyscraper if it allowed you to create a green park at its base, or would you reduce the height of the building and use all of the available space because people usually have better mental-health outcomes when they have easier access to the street? It’s a version of the same dilemma facing people who want to switch to an electric vehicle – will it be of more benefit to the planet than sticking with the same old petrol car for 25 years? – or airlines considering junking planes that are only a few years old but already considered fuel-gobbling dinosaurs. The critics say that the carbon released by this could outweigh all the benefits of a more sustainable building rising here. The owners want to demolish it as it no longer serves their needs and replace it with a greener, more sustainable edifice. Meanwhile, on London’s Oxford Street, there’s a divisive debate about the future of a Marks & Spencer department store. But taking down a tree is emotive and people want to know where we stand on the issue. ![]() After years of toing and froing, it looks as though the trees will have to go. Their vast trunks are pushing hard against a neighbour’s wall and they’re concerned about their safety, not to mention the very visible damage that’s being done to their building. Not ancient: two saplings probably first took hold here about 100 years ago now their boughs are intertwined. Where we live there are two towering London plane trees that rise high above the houses. ![]()
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May 2023
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