Third in a series

Re “Of No Small Consequence – Falling in Love”

Before he left Culver City to return to a land he loved and called “delicious” 35 years ago when he was a collegian, Vice Mayor Thomas Small spoke as an architectural maven with a global grasp.

While Mr. Small, his wife Joanna and their twins are in Capo d’Orlando, Sicily, to clinch a Sister City agreement, he, especially, is savoring a return to the countryside he portrays in liltingly poetic terms.

When he took a year off from his studies at Yale to drink in the historic richness of Italy and Sicily in 1982, Mr. Small lived part of the year in an Italian hill town.

“There usually is a castle at the top in hill towns,” he said. “In medieval times, the castle was fortified. The village would grow around the castle, going down the hill, like a snail. Like a snail shell.

“It is very organic, the way those Italian cities grew.”

The artist/architect in Mr. Small peered in on the conversation.

“In modern times,” he said, “we try to design towns that way, and it’s hard.

“Here in Culver City, it is hard to find a way to grow the city organically. When you go too fast, when you impose things on it, that is when you get things wrong. And that actually has happened a lot.”

(To be continued)