Speaking of anachronistic buildings next to each other in Europe, obviously a far greater occurrence than in North America.

The tower of London and Londn City Hall facing one another across the Thames are an example of positive contrast. The modernism of the City Hall does not take away from the grisly dignity of the Tower, if anything it adds to it and contextualises it. It´s a beautiful building in its own right, that looks as natural on the riverbank as its older companions. Europe is also however, a breeding ground for bad juxtaposition, frequently in the form of 1960s apartment and office buildings tucked among Victorian tenement flats, or graceful turn of the century houses. While it´s true that history gives many buildings a newfound charm–the above-mentioned tenements were likely not considered beautiful in their original era–it is difficult to imagine anyone ever treasuring those dingy and discoloured forty-year-old buildings. Time and again though these grating juxtapositions appear, like an old church with an antenna coming out the top, a fishing village with a disconcerting highrise at one end, a perfect picture ruined by a parking lot.

Perhaps more grating still, however, is the “corporate juxtaposition” which results when McDonalds goes in next to the cathedral, or the disorientation that results from walking through an old neighbourhood shopping street, to find that instead of the traditional shoe seller a shop would appear to be from a distance, it is in fact an Adidas outlet. The conversion of most European city centres into clone cities with the exact same shops is well documented, but this makes it no less depressing when encountered time and again in person. I have now lived in both Britain and Spain for a couple of years apiece and while both countries are guilty of these transgressions, Britain is by far the worst. I loved Glasgow when I lived there, a recent visit to the North of England made me wonder if my experience would not have been much the same in Manchester or Liverpool.