The Australian Ugliness (2010)
“She was living on a small street off the Parc de la Ciutadella, near the Arc de Triomf, walking distance from the tourist mecca of the Barri Gòtic. It seemed full of old-world character, with rows of ramshackle working-class apartments that housed the city’s immigrant population. Every evening we would hear music outside on the street: the frenetic beating of drums; the call and response of English- and Spanish-language hip-hop; the chanting of the Call to Prayer. Music, motion, life lived on t...he streets—everything missing, I said, from our cities back home. My friend, an expat, nodded her head in agreement at my criticisms of Australian suburbia. But a Catalan colleague of hers who had joined us for a drink rolled her eyes in frustration at our whingeing. ‘You haven’t seen our suburbs,’ she challenged me. ‘You’ve come in straight off the Metro and think that this is the heartbeat of the city. Well, ninety per cent of people in Barcelona don’t live here. They live in the suburbs, as I do, and the suburbs are ugly as sin.MoreLess
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