An ambulance zoomed past me at the Exhibition Square bus stop. As its sirens blared, I thought about how this careening van was a direct response to a stimulus in someone’s body. But then I thought – and I often do, when I see a vehicle in rapid response mode – that York itself is like a body, in which something has been damaged, and that this sprawling body has detected damage to itself and dispatched its white blood cells – an ambulance.

I think the ready way in which this metaphor springs to mind (and the fact that many others have already thought it), is testament to how impressively bound together a modern city is. But if lines of communication between separate parts of the city were more difficult to negotiate – if traffic didn’t part like the Red Sea when an emergency vehicle approached – then the body metaphor would become less and less accurate as a description. A city that’s divided, in fact, is not much like a body at all – or perhaps it’s a very sick body.