Need to leach some more urbanastics out of your weekend? Open House not enough? Feeling a bit psychogeographic? The School of Life are running Decoding the City today at 11am – and have a handful of tickets left. The tour is taken by Leo Hollis, an author of two book on the history of London: The Phoenix: The Men Who Made Modern London, and The Stones of London: A History Through Twelve Buildings.
“The future is urban. Half of us already live in cities, and the numbers are growing. The metropolis is where the twenty-first century is going to happen. Leo Hollis is a historian and an urbanist. He argues our urban future is a good thing: it has the potential to deliver a better life for us all.
To help us thrive in the Big Smoke, Hollis will teach us how to read it better. He has devised this multi-layered dérive through London’s past and future to reveal the secret science and art of urban living. As we pass from rooftop panoramas to hidden backstreets, we’ll discover how to decode nearly 2000 years of history; how the invention of the elevator changed everything; what the story of the Great Fire of 1666 reveals about the nature of resilience; the importance of trust in a complex society; and the future of the vertical metropolis. Hollis will show us how these concrete ideas support his passionate manifesto for a new kind of urban living: complex, creative, people-centred.”
Tickets and more information. 11am meeting today at New Change, London. 2 hour duration.
