Rebuild our cities

For an ancient city with an illustrious industrial history, Derby doesn’t get much attention. But it does boast at least one famous, possibly apocryphal story, known to scholars of urbanism.

Sometime in the 80s or 90s (accounts differ), a party of visiting German VIPs was given a tour of the city’s sights: the humdrum housing schemes; the corners of concrete bleakness; the sad disjointed malls and random multi-storey car parks.

Struck near-dumb by the ugliness, the Germans apologised profusely for the damage clearly wrought on poor Derby by the Luftwaffe: wiping away a venerable city centre, leaving behind such tragic hideousness. At this point the local bigwigs laughed, perhaps awkwardly, and said ‘Oh no, Derby was barely touched in the war, we did all this to ourselves, when we redeveloped.’

I’ve been thinking of this story of late, as I’ve watched the repulsive assault on Ukraine’s ancient cities, Kharkhiv, Kyiv, Odesa. Beyond the emotions of helpless empathy and human horror, the tale of Derby’s destruction makes me wonder: how will these Ukrainian cities be rebuilt? And then I think: well, when they are rebuilt, whatever the Ukrainians do, they mustn’t do what Britain did from 1945 to 2015.