‘The ostracism of beauty extends to every corner of public policy. With the single exception of "areas of outstanding natural beauty" (nature being splendid only in specific places), the word beauty does not appear in statute law. The most ubiquitous sphere of policy, development control and land-use planning, averts its eye from beauty, despite that concept having been its catalyst in the ribbon sprawl of 1930s
Everyone senses beauty. In this delayed and demented spring, millions of people have driven out of towns to see snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils. They take and buy pictures of them. A few will mutter lines from Wordsworth. Summer will see a surge of visits to museums and galleries, to country houses and parks, to dales and peaks, to old villages and towns. In cities people will crowd into the few surviving old quarters, for the simple reason that they find them more beautiful than the new ones. They do not flock to
Simon Jenkins in today’s Guardian.
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