Because the city is so old and new, so traditional and experimental, because it has sucked up the whole world but only half-digested it, because it doesn't know where it's going, because its intelligence is directed away from itself, because it is unknowable, London is the most up-to-date place there is.. What a crashing bore they all are in their single-minded modernism.In the future, any place or person that is only one thing will appear lifeless and dated The next phase in evolution is multiple identity. Even these brand-new triumphant cities of the Pacific Rim - Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Seattle. And everywhere else seems slightly old-fashioned after London.

Even its squalor becomes stylised into a kind of desperate Dickensian cuteness: squat chic. But, unlike the Continentals, no one slavishly follows fashion in London Instead, they make fashion Everyone looks different. Barricades? Where could you put them? People would just go round another way It's impossible to have such big adventures in London. But, if all else fails, the city uses its secret weapon: naffification London consumes fads, ideas, cultures at the highest speed.