In 1993 the psychologist James Hillman suggested that contemporary cities were having a desensitising effect on their inhabitants. In his words, urban form is having an 'anaesthetic' rather than an 'aesthetic' effect on humanity. In constructing our urban environments we seem to have forgotten that form has power; that poor form makes us feel poor; ill-conceived form makes us feel ill. The misuse of the 'silent' power of form is perhaps one of the greatest threats to our cities and to city life, yet as an issue it is so subtle, that it goes unnoticed by most and is often not well understood by those with the sensitivity to see it. In a recently published book I set out a clear explanation of this subject, but here let me recast one of the central ideas in the terms used by Louis Kahn, when he sought to address this matter in the late 1960s.
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