5 July 09: On the Fourth on the fifth, or, Days In Torino

by Nathaniel Popkin
July 5, 2009

I resist. Sitting in a luminous apartment, I hear a car's engine. I hear birds. I hear church bells. "I think I am getting accustomed to those bells," says Lena, 9. Actually, aside from a noticeable lack of police sirens, the sounds aren't that different. We have church bells on Bainbridge Street.

This sort of thing is what I resist for now: the need to compare this city and ours, the form of one quite apparently based on the other (more on that subject later this week or next); and also the endless and centuries' old cliché of American urban inferiority. They know how to live here. This too I resist.

Instead, and at least for now, resistance reveals: rhythmic monumentality. Unfurling piazzas. Aperitif. A languorous river. Arcades. Arabic in the market -- Europe's largest in open air. The Alps linger, and sometimes they are visible. But they are mostly forgotten here. This -- Torino -- is a serious city, a haughty, elegant, thinking place.

–Nathaniel Popkin
nathaniel.popkin@gmail.com

For Nathaniel Popkin archives, please see HERE, or visit his web site HERE.
For more on The Possible City, please see HERE.

Photo of Mole Antonelliana, Torino, Italy, from Wikipedia public domain.

POPKIN ARCHIVES:

• 8 June 09: Awash in voices
• 5 November 08: Step into the street
• 25 September 08: Review of Vanished Gardens: Finding Nature in Philadelphia
• 26 August 08: Which direction is it?
• 12 August 08: Nica-life
• 14 July 08: All this is mine
• 20 June 08: A Pennsylvania Spy in Tunis
• 10 April 08: Non-performance clause
• 4 April 08: Anniversaries
• 6 February 08: Review of Our Savage Neighbors
• 29 January 08: Popkin on Progress
• 7 January 08: I walked in it was gray, walked out it was May
• 18 December 07: Review of Coltrane: The story of a sound
• 5 December 07: The streetlamp survey
• 3 December 07: Higher than usual at 40th & Pine
• 20 November 07: These go to eleven
• 23 October 07: On Lubert Plaza
• 25 September 07: Review of Forgotten Philadelphia
• 10 September 07: The circle forms and breaks again
• 22 August 07: Use it for the common good
• 13 August 07: Review of Walking Broad
• 5 July 07: Still taking it
• 13 June 07: Saints in the secular city
• 6 June 07: The port, the future and your Philly Skyline
• 25 May 07: Four courses of brick
• 18 May 07: We have our victory yet!
• 2 May 07: Human Genome: S
• 30 April 07: How things change
• 28 March 07: A whole lot of meaning and nothing to do
• 15 February 07: Squadron Volante
• 14 February 07: Happy Valentine's Day! With love, the National Park Service
• 25 January 07: Juggling and sipping . . . at City Hall?
• 15 January 07: Possibility
• 6 October 06: On 13xx South Street
• 26 July 06: Walk on Washington


See also:
The Possible City

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