CITY living, the great staycation and the importance of connecting with others were the topics debated by columnists and contributors in the newspapers.
The Guardian
Andy Beckett said cities in Britain had, since 2010, felt cursed due to a decade of riots, terrorism, knife crime, air pollution, homelessness, a wider housing crisis and the deepest austerity cuts.
“As coronavirus threatens to make urban life much harder for the foreseeable future, alongside articles about moving to the country, newspapers are full of predictions that the crowded, hyperactive modern city may be doomed,” he said. “But for anyone fearing – or hoping – that’s the case, it’s worth remembering that the fortunes of urban Britain usually go in phases.”
He said that for the most of the last century our cities were in trouble due to the blitz, a post war rush to new towns and industrial collapse.
“This pattern of decline was so common that “inner city” became shorthand for social tension and economic decay, rather than a phrase that someone marketing new flats might use today,” he said. “ In my part of east London during lockdown, there have been glimpses of a different city emerging: traffic lanes annexed for pedestrians; and new pavement and front garden social rituals, which are loosening old hang-ups about the difference between private and public space. If you love cities, there’s something quite moving about these small attempts to get one going again.”
He said the immediate future with new ways of living in a city will be hard.
“Living in a city is often about sharing, proximity to strangers, and not worrying too much about hygiene – about who previously sat in your bus seat,” he said. “With “non-essential” shops reopening today, with all their new rules, we’ll realise how far from the usual spontaneity urban life remains.”
The Daily Express
Tim Newark said there was nothing to beat a British holiday ‘when the sun shines.’
“ And now, as our post-coronavirus economy stirs, we’ll all be doing little businesses a favour the length and breadth of the country by spending our summer hols here,” he said.
He said figures showed more than 50 per cent of Britons took their holidays at homes last year, and that is ‘going to rocket’ this year.
“Last year, 41 million foreign visitors came to the UK, spending more than £28billion on their time here, an increase of seven percent on the previous year,” he said. “Now, sadly, that inflow will be much diminished as international travel is hit hard by pandemic uncertainty.”
He said it was important that we make up for the shortfall in foreign visitors by taking our holidays in the UK.
“In the past, family holidays in Britain might have been marred by soggy cheese sandwiches or greasy fish and chips, but restaurants and hotels across the country have now upped their game to produce delicious, adventurous food made from excellent local ingredients so a stay-at-home holiday can be a culinary treat,” he added. “From indoor cultural pleasures to outside challenging exercise, Britain has it all and when the sun shines—as it is predicted to this summer—there is no place better in the world to spend your holidays than here.”
The Scotsman
Karyn McCluskey, chief executive of Community Justice Scotland, said she, like many others, was resorting to DIY tasks during lockdown and last week painted her front door.
“I found myself chatting to many passers-by – in fact, I probably spoke to more people in the flesh that day than I have in months,” she said. “I noticed that people were stopping for a conversation, not just the acknowledgement of a ‘good afternoon’; and the majority of them were older people.”
She said it was clear that many were craving ‘the smallest morsel of human interaction.’
“There must be so many people all over Scotland who are trapped in their homes, isolated and with barely any human contact – last week the Royal College of GPs warned of an ‘epidemic of loneliness’ caused by the pandemic,” she said. “Right now, finding a way to ensure everyone has a way to connect to others is a basic and essential human requirement – as well as the difference, in some cases, between life and death.
“If there is to be a measure of us as a society during the pandemic, it is surely how we treated those we don’t hear and can’t – or won’t - see.”
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