Belair: A Summer Gothic

I find myself at a crossroads on a rapidly heating summer morning in Belair, looking at an enormous green crane towering above a building site that has been abandoned for the summer. Somewhere on this hill, when most of the area was meadows surrounding the Daubenfeld estate, stood the city’s gallows. That was in 1637; now, after centuries of development, amidst sprawling villas with their elaborate back gardens and swimming pools, the green crane looks like a gallows of a different kind. It is also one of the last truly green things remaining in this summer landscape. Everything else is …