ESSAY: False Urban Memory Syndrome
Austin Williams | 13 May 2004 The urban memory debate is one in which aspects of the city (town, or village) – hidden quarters, alleys or buried artefacts – are revived into the modern setting to provide an added dimension to people’s appreciation of the built environment. Not only that but abstractions such as memories, historical events or folklore from a previous generation are captured, reinterpreted and given a...
The Academics of the Madhouse
Austin Williams | 31 March 2005 Revised criteria for university research funding are causing much protest. But is the solution being argued for any better? The ‘strictly private and confidential’ memo sent to Daily Telegraph staff in February outlined five criteria on which their performance and hence their status in the compulsory redundancy hierarchy would be judged. The five categories were: 1. Approach to work (their...
Commuting: The Life Sentence
Austin Williams| 8 June 2004 The one aspect of the daily grind that is guaranteed to provoke an opinion is the commute to work. Congested roads, overcrowded trains, packed buses and sweaty tubes – it’s been said that if travel broadens the mind, commuting shrinks it back. Few would contest that the transport infrastructure is in a sorry state. But if the commuting experience is really so bad why do so many of us continue to do it? ...
Real Development
Austin Williams | 17 March 2004 When Sebastian Tombs, Chief Executive of the RIAS recently announced that “sustainability has been recognised formally by the RIAS as one of the keys to successful development of the built environment’ he was simply voicing what is now a commonplace assumption; that Sustainability Rules OK. Admittedly, there appears to be no alternative to sustainability, but since nobody really knows what it...
Tomorrow's World
David Clements | 13 December 2003 ‘One year ago, Tomorrow’s World was cancelled,’ announced Austin Williams, convenor of the one-day conference Future Vision: Future Cities and chair of the final plenary ‘Tomorrow’s World: Visions of the Future ‘. Indeed, as the knowing laughs from the audience suggested, even though the reference was to the former BBC flagship of TV Science, the implications are wider...
Dan Dare, or Dan Daren't
‘Future Visions: Future Cities’ Conference, London School of Economics, 6 December 2003 Reviewed by Dave Clements | 11 December 2003 The Future Visions: Future Cities conference, supported by the Architects Journal, examined the role of the city through the prism of politics, culture and economics. Future Visions: Future Cities (FV: FC) was billed as an exploration of ‘city visions: past and present’, taking on the...
There’s No Such Thing As Society… Only Local Solutions
David Clements | 10 December 2003 People “should be told to be braver” if the widespread and socially-damaging fear of crime and strangers is to be beaten, Miranda Sawyer, author of a book that investigated local neighbourhoods told a day-long conference Future Vision: Future Cities at the London School of Economics. “Cities are a bit rough”, she admitted, but people were capable of taking control of their...
Rebranding Parochialism
Austin Williams | 21 November 2003 There’s a point in most cowboy movies from the Fifties, when the out-of-town sheriff steps in to stop an angry mob from taking the law into their own hands. Even though these films are in black and white – in more than one sense – the townspeoples’ spontaneous anger is usually mollified by the elected sheriff’s insistence on due process. Admittedly, these events are...
The Making of Paris
Austin Williams | 13 November 2003 This year sees the 150th anniversary of Haussmann’s appointment as Prefect of the Seine, engaged to draw up the plans for Paris, one of the greatest, most audacious proposals in town planning ever seen. One-and-a-half centuries later, and in New Localism or New Centralism? Planning and the Regions, Sir Jeremy Beecham, chairman of the UK’s Local Government Association, argues that ‘counties are under...
The vision thing
Austin Williams | 13 November 2003 Here we explore the methods, the madness, the legacy and the redefinition of Baron Haussmann’s influential work in Paris and ask whether it could happen today. This year sees the 150th anniversary of Haussmann’s appointment as Prefect of the Seine, engaged to draw up the plans for Paris, one of the greatest, most audacious proposals in town planning ever seen. One and a half centuries...
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