Spark urban renewal with a flower grenade

When the Industrial Revolution swept across Europe it caused the urbanisation of life for many people.

Crammed, sometimes several families to a room, into ugly and unsanitary tenements, these new city dwellers must have wondered what sin they had committed to be deserving of such harsh punishment. Hard work and deprivation were plentiful but food and comfort were in short supply. Life lived in extremis is unlikely to result in the creation of beautiful and harmonious surroundings and, for many, some aspects of ugly city life continue to this day.

Certainly major projects, such as Baron Haussmann’s attempt to convert Paris from a medieval maze of narrow alleys where crime and pestilence thrived, to the city of wide avenues and impressive boulevards that we know today, did take place, but these were exceptions that proved the rule. For most European citizens life was still, in the words of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

For 21st century city dwellers, life is considerably more pleasant. European cities now contain green areas where even those whose everyday reality is a high-rise apartment, can experience fresh air and grass under foot. Yet, some will have to travel further than others.

Contemporary Europeans are still greatly influenced by the Romantic movement of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and believe that contact with the living world is an essential ingredient in maintaining mental well-being. This has resulted in the creation of schemes where inner-city children are treated to day trips to the countryside.

Adults, however, are expected to cope with life in the city as best they can.

If you feel that your part of the city could do with some improvement, may we suggest throwing a grenade? Designed in the shape of a hand grenade, these beautifully crafted terracotta pots are designed to break on impact and will sow seeds that, within a few short weeks, will improve your part of the concrete jungle.

Containing rye grass, poppies and buttercup seeds, these are exactly the weapons that you need to wage war on urban decay.

New post on at Wednesday, 14 July, 2010, 9:53 am and is archived in Culture, Lifestyle. Subscribe to answers with RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or make a trackback from your web.