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Why open communities; why should communities not shut themselves off if they wish? Is this Sesame Street? As for joy, excuse me, gentlemen, how do you know that people want joy? I don't want it. Go meddle in someone else's life.

Like Louis MacNeice I identify the bossiness of the utopian, into whose mouth he puts these words:

With all this rebuilding we have found an antidote
To quiet and self-communing; from now on nobody
Strolling the streets need lapse into timelessness
Or ponder the simple unanswerable questions."
(New Jerusalem)

( I am reminded that the only possible retort to the enjoinder: "Have a Nice Day!" is "I have other plans.")

In London we have never really had planning. Don't really want it. We like our dismal, piecemeal, unplanned un-mayored city….OK unmayored no more But London is different.

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