Chapter 60 Belgium dwells with mediocrity

Brugge is the translated name of Map Publishing House in Mainland China, and translated into Bruges in Taiwan.According to Belgian friends, Brugge is closer to their pronunciation. In the Middle Ages, it was a famous port town.Horseshoe stone roads, canals and sparse forests, the tallest is the windmill, and the most is the city gate.The white stone building has turned black, and the cellar window is close to the river bank, remembering the loading and unloading of goods and the ebb and flow of the tide thousands of years ago.It is said that the daughters-in-law of each family loved to sit at the door and weave lace. Later, when there were more tourists, they hid in the house, quietly beautiful and quietly old, leaving the street quiet.

There are few traffic lights in the city, but there are tacit traffic rules: pedestrians come first, carriages come second, bicycles come third, and cars come last.Then you can go at ease, and smile to see the rein of the horse slowly pulled, and the vehicle respectfully yields.The body is the god of the machine, and the weak is the master of the strong. Here, only man is the red light of everything. Such a small town cannot but be liked. From this, a series of issues related to urban ecology came to mind. I remember reading the works of several western futurists such as Toffler and Naisbitt more than ten years ago, knowing that human beings no longer need to gather in groups and communicate face to face in the face of new information means, so urban civilization will gradually spread. Get an individual breakdown.This kind of prophecy is based on the popularization of advanced technology, but it just fits the old yearning in my heart that literati should disperse rather than gather together, so I am very pleased.However, as many years have passed, the advanced level and popularization of information means have far exceeded the predictions of the prophets, but the individualized decomposition of cities has not become a reality according to the predictions.

In fact, long before Toffler and his predictions, people had already complained about modern large cities in many ways.Overcrowding, traffic jams, air pollution, high costs, and crime are among the complaints.Reflected in the cultural mentality, people are increasingly cursing the forests of steel and concrete and the traps of industrialization, imagining villages with small bridges and flowing water, and neighbors laughing through the windows.It has become vulgar to praise the city, and it is fashionable to live in the countryside. Since it is so necessary to deviate from the big cities, and the means of information make this divergence possible, then why has this trend not yet become strong?

During this trip to Europe, I tried my best to discuss this issue with the management and people of insight in various cities, and only then did I gradually understand the reason. The West pays attention to practical calculations. Facts have proved that the cost of living in a rural or suburban town is higher than that in a city.The departure from the city is conditioned by the existence of cars, and it is this condition that makes people who leave the city face a long drive.For example, it is difficult for couples to guarantee jobs in the same suburb. Only cities can provide the best opportunities for children's education and employment, and the high-level hospitals most needed by retirees are generally located in cities.In this case, if you deliberately live in the countryside, how much driving energy will be wasted and how much air pollution will be increased.

Because of the city's centralization, it is easy to solve the scattered problems together, and the cost of the solution can be divided to the lowest possible cost.For example, for the centralized control of pollution, cities around the world currently surpass rural areas, and the per capita supply of other equipment and energy is much more economical in cities. That is to say, when human beings need to readjust their relationship with nature, cities are by far the most economical ecology to use the earth's resources; if people continue to expand to nature, it will be an expensive cost to the individual and the whole.

Because of this, countries around the world have not seen a large wave of population exodus from cities to the countryside until today, and in the foreseeable future, the overall trend will still be to gather in cities.Back then, futurists pointed out that new means of information provided the possibility of diaspora, but facts have proved that this means provides a greater possibility for aggregation.Since the development of computers has reduced the space burden of enterprises, there is no need to move the reduced space to the outer suburbs, but it will increase the convenience of being in the city center.

One of the most contentious issues of all is the flow of immigrants to the big cities.A lot of evidence proves that this tide has increased the burden on cities, reduced the quality of life, and added unexpected disasters; however, some scholars have pointed out that every major development of cities is related to immigration, and the development of many cities in Europe is actually Immigration still needs to be done. The problem is to improve the quality of immigrants.The higher the degree of development of a city, the higher the overall level of immigrants, and immigrants who do not meet the requirements can only move to other places.

However, this is just talk. In practice, how do these European countries with increasingly loose borders choose the quality of immigrants?In the context of global economic integration, this is the biggest hidden worry that cities encounter, and no solution has been found so far. Judging from the European countries we have traveled along the way, the proportion of citizens in London and Paris moving out of the city is slightly higher; this trend does not appear in several poor countries such as Spain, Ireland, and Portugal, because the countryside there is still deserted ; Germany, Switzerland, Austria and other countries have both urban and rural prosperity, in a state of balance.Many insightful people believe that there are two effective ways to avoid urban diseases and prevent the expansion of rural areas: one is to build communities with complete facilities in the outskirts of cities; the other is to expand natural spaces in cities.

Then, the cultural charm and aesthetic attitude can only be excavated from these various ways of life, and it is not appropriate to exaggerate the yearning for the rural ecology. A small town like Bruges is between the urban ecology and the small town ecology, and it dissolves many interests, but if you want to live for a long time, it is a dream for most modern people.How can there be so many Bruges? In short, the big cities we're among are full of flaws, but not yet ready to curse and stride away.Knowing that there are forest green slopes and small town horseshoes in the distance, but we are destined to live with mediocrity and noise.