THE GREEN SPACES

There's always a lot of talk about getting more green spaces in the cities, keeping the green spaces, protecting the green spaces, expanding the green. Ya gotta love the green, they tell me.

Now, I'm a city dweller. In fact, I've been a city dweller all my life. Which means I am, by and large, ignorant of what goes on in the countryside. Are they calling out for more buildings? Do they want less green spaces? Are they offering a balance to the city dwellers' obsession with getting more grassy parks? Are they as jealous of our cramped, polluted, noisy, built-up areas as we are of their wooded slopes and open meadows?

Because, while the demand for more green spaces in the cities is a good thing, I wonder quite what the point of the city is. Isn't the city all about the construction and the paving and the road building? If we keep demanding more parks and green areas don't we end up with a field? Isn't that all the countryside is? A city with a rather unhealthy amount of green space?