Aerial views remind me of what James C Scott once described as "seeing like a state" - the reduction, or perhaps, transformation of the complexity of individual interactions and activities to a distinct optic of aggregate patterns and data points.

But they also show the aggregate beauty of locally co-ordinated life within the human-altered landscape, from the tidy arrangement of allotments to the tracks of farm tractors, animals and emergent plant life.

If we are not careful, however, these alluring patterns can obscure the individuality inherent in human life that form the components of these organised schemes. Which, above all, we should never lose sight of.