Property News · August 12, 2016

Let’s move to Lanark: former workers’ paradise, now commuter heaven


It has a world heritage site preserving Robert Owen’s utopian mill and planned communityWhat’s going for it? A fair few commuting executives schlepping to and from Glasgow each day have created their own little utopias on the banks of the Clyde, their thinking about the future of mankind rarely reaching higher than an electrically operated garage and a NutriBullet. Robert Owen got there first. He had bigger fish to fry, like the future of humanity. As a lesson to industrial Gradgrinds up and down the country, and in the wake of the French Revolution, this industrial magnate built his own utopia to pull us hoi polloi out of the slums. His “village of unity”, New Lanark, put the welfare of workers centre stage, with a day nursery (in 1798!), a children’s playground (in 1798!), an adult education centre (in 1798!), the slightly scary-sounding Institute for the Formation of Character, and a hot tub in each home. OK, so I made up the hot tub bit. But Owen’s vision was freakishly forward-thinking. So much so that we’re all still waiting for his promised land to materialise. In the meantime Old Lanark will have to suffice, its pretty centre the first spot outside Glasgow where you can escape the industrial smudge and breeeeaaaathe.The case against… The usual small-town blues. At least the bright lights of Glasgow are nearby to quell the tedium. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Let’s move to Lanark: former workers’ paradise, now commuter heaven

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