EMBLEMS OF CIVILIZATION
In EMBLEMS OF CIVILIZATION Simon Standing visits modern residential neighbourhoods. They will have looked idyllic on the drawing boards of the architects, but once in the hands of their new residents the neighbourhoods show their true faces. The residents screen themselves from one another with iron curtains of fences and garden sheds. Nature comes from the garden supply store and is reduced to lawns that are enclosed by one’s own fence and that of the neighbours. The mini-estates contrast sharply with the rural landscapes which they commonly adjoin, and where before the “modernisation” people still had all sorts of space.
