Cities have always been the movers and shakers of European history. As a Londoner, I remain in awe of the excitement and surging cosmopolitanism of Britain’s capital, increasingly the most internationalist city on the globe. And look at Berlin. “What belongs together, should come together,” said Willy Brandt, urging that Germany’s capital move from sleepy Bonn to humming Berlin. If London is the bridge between Europe and America, Berlin is the pivot between Europe, Russia and Eastern Europe. The glass walls of the extraordinary new Reichstag, housing the German Parliament, lets people actually see into the heart of their democracy–an instance of avant-garde European architecture revitalizing the public space of cities.
The new energy is not confined to Europe’s capitals. Consider the cities of the former Soviet imperium. Prague, Warsaw, Budapest and Dresden now not only look beautiful after the dirt and shabbiness of communism, but they also exude a commitment to a European tolerance and modernism that bodes well for 21st-century European history. Each city has its strength. Tallinn in Estonia is recovering its Hanseatic glory as a great Lutheran Baltic trading center. Vilnius, inland in Lithuania, is rediscovering its Jewish heritage. Places like Marseilles, Barcelona and Liverpool are converting their once run-down red-light port districts into new hubs linking people to the sea.
As in the Renaissance-era urban boom, one of the driving forces behind this flowering is art. Coach loads of Viennese make the 40-mile trip to Bratislava, where the best seats in the excellent opera house are available for under ¤10. You can see top- quality opera in the Slovakian capital for under a dollar. There are 21 opera houses in German cities, 16 in Italian cities and 11 in French cities. Opera in Britain flourishes more in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cardiff than in the overpriced, elitist Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Liverpool’s Tate Gallery, an extension of the London Tate galleries, brings the best of modern art to northwest England. In the nearby cities of Salford and Manchester, the new gallery dedicated to L. S. Lowry’s paintings or Daniel Libeskind’s war museum are the kind of confident architectural statements that northern England has not seen in a century.
Each European city is its own local laboratory for experimentation in urban transport and regeneration policies. The mayor of Paris, Bernard Delanoe, turned the river-bank highways south of the Seine into a giant beach this summer, complete with sand and sun chairs. It was a cheeky Gallic finger to the mighty automobile, and Parisians loved it. The London Eye, the giant Ferris wheel that looms over Parliament on the bank of the Thames, was put up as a joke for the 2000 millennium celebrations but is now as permanent a feature of the London landscape as the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It is the diversity of Europe’s cities that is their strength. London is the hub of world finance. Paris keeps alive the idea of the intellectual who contests every received wisdom. Stockholm’s clean streets show how a market economy can deliver social justice and more equality. Sure, there are McDonald’s and Body Shops. Why not? There are many more of the boutiques, bistros, bookstores and new forms of fast food that make European city life so exhilarating.
Even more exciting are the links being developed between cities. They are being connected by high-speed trains in France and by the extraordinary network of low-cost airlines like easyJet and Ryanair. These airlines breathe life into regional cities like Perpignan and Pisa, which have become accessible in terms of time and money to millions of other Europeans. And the bonds they are forging between urban centers are in many cases stronger than those between cities and their countrysides. Londoners will go Christmas shopping in Barcelona while Parisians take the Eurostar to visit the free museums of London. Lyon, Turin and Geneva get together to see how their Alpine corner of Europe can keep its wealth while protecting their common mountain environment. City leaders talk to each other without waiting for clearance from national or regional governments.
With Europe’s countryside mired in the ruinously expensive subsidies mandated by the EU’s protectionist agricultural policies, it is to cities that Europe must look for new ideas, new jobs and new leadership. These growing links can only accelerate the dissolving of national boundaries, even as they become focal points for more regionalized culture and ties. And that’s only natural. In an era of cities, each will come more and more to see that their interests truly lie with one another.
