I am increasingly certain that English cities are designed in such a way as to kill pedestrians.
I don't drive, and have never driven, but this conjecture is not motivated out of a sense of bitterness, as I don't think I'd ever wish to test myself behind the wheel of a car. Those of you who can, I wish you well.
No, it's motivated by the tightrope walk I have to endure every time I go somewhere unfamiliar: slaloming crazily through bright lines of traffic suspended like jewels on an invisible thread; measuring the Doppler effect as I judge whether it's safe to make a move yet.
The cynic in me asks: so what if another non-driver dies? Walking everywhere, or taking public transport, will never yield the same revenues as being trapped by a GATSO or being clobbered for sitting on a double yellow line.
I suspect we are accelerating headlong into what will inevitably be called post-capitalism, a system which will work by delineating the instruments of production and those who wield them from those who are beaten into submission by them ever-more sharply.
From this perspective, then - I am not suggesting that cities were designed with the post-capitalist era in mind, only that such structures are inevitable as a consequence of the mindset which conceptualised them - the thumbprint of the motor vehicle will embed itself ever deeper into the scalp of those who choose to be pedestrianised.
Those who wield cars - the instruments which produce millions of pounds of revenue for a fixed outlay - beat each other, and the pedestrian, into submission, and do the work of the post-capitalist whilst going about their everyday business. It is perfection if the majority sleep-walk into the clothes laid out for them, for they act automatically, and with abandon.
