The Week’s Links 04

Two takes on urban life, animal and human, and an exciting disappointment. How Rome’s Urban Shepherds Adapt and Survive An aspect of Rome that most tourists never notice is how close to the city centre sheep may safely graze. I come across them on my bicycle and have often wondered what the story is. Now I know. The sheep are invaluable for the ecosystem services they provide, but their existence, and thus those of their shepherds, is threatened by modernisation. I hope they hang on. The forgotten formula for lovable cities does not feature sheep. Instead, it is all about squares, their size and proportions; the unimportance of symmetry, so not, actually, square squares; monuments and statues, off to the side; and big or important buildings given a supportive context. Plenty of illustrations make the point elegantly, and one is left wondering how on earth modernism got such a stranglehold on urban planning. Could it be, as is often whispered, that the architects responsible seldom…

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