Getting planners off our backs
By Alastair Donald | 22 September ‘This Government means business’ announced David Cameron recently, and that starts with ‘getting planners off our backs’. But as highlighted by recent initiatives which attempt to use design to make us fitter and healthier, planners are meddling more than ever in our personal affairs and lifestyle choices. There are many aspects of the coalition government’s recent statement on Housing and Growth...
How to win the long jump
Martin Earnshaw | 17 September 2012 Who now regards Athens as a world beating Olympic city? Today, the horror stories of abandoned stadia and rubbish strewn swimming pools, though disputed, are commonplace in media accounts of what happened to the Olympic site. The fear that the Olympic Park of 2012 may too become a wind-swept and neglected wasteland in the heart of a stubbornly run-down East London dominates the never ending debate...
Whatever happened to Utopia?
FILM: ‘Utopia London’ by Tom Cordell, 2010 Reviewed by Rowan Morrice | 14 September 2012 It’s not often we hear about Utopia these days. An idea which used to be identified with the future, is now a purely historic phenomenon. Today when it seems we can only imagine a dystopian future, this film presents a nostalgic look back at the Modern movement in 20th Century London. The film charts, through a series of key...
As China is getting bolder the West is losing confidence
Austin Williams | Monday 3rd September 2012 LIVING and working in China – where I teach urban design to eager architecture students – is a constant adventure. Unlike the UK, where we seem to spend our time discussing what, how or even whether to build, it is exciting to be in a country that is actually doing it. China is building 20 cities a year. Britain hasn’t built a city in the last 50 years, instead imbuing existing towns with...
Chronic Dissentery: Olympic Whingers
‘The Art of Dissent’ edited by Hilary Powell et al Austin Williams | 24 July 2012 British comedian Jimmy Carr was recently heckled with the taunt ‘You don’t pay tax’. Floundering for reply, Carr spat: ‘I pay what I have to and not a penny more’, which was possibly one of the least funny comeback lines ever delivered. This exchange, allied to the growth of the self-proclaimed ‘grassroots movement’ UK Uncut, which campaigns...
FILM: Urbanization
‘Urbanized’ directed by Gary Hustwit, 2011 Reviewed by Michael Owens | 25 June 2012 Urbanized is the cinematic delight one might expect of Gary Hustwit, the director of this, the third in a trilogy of studies in design, following Helvetica (modernism in a typeface), and Objectified (industrial and product design). Each deals with a dimension of design’s intimate relationship daily life. Here, we look at design...
The Power Broker
‘The Power Broker: Robert Moses And The Fall Of New York’ by Robert Caro; Knopf, 1974. 1344pp Reviewed by Michael Owens | 31 March 2012 Robert Caro’s epic account of the life of Robert Moses, the man central to shaping the physical fabric and governance of twentieth century New York, is both scholarly and highly readable. It is considered a definitive account of the play of power in the making of the greatest world city at...
City migration as a development problem? It’s the ultimate urban myth
Alastair Donald | 17 February 2012 (The Guardian) Rather than portraying rapid urbanisation in terms of overconsumption, we should be celebrating it. In January, China marked a historic milestone in its development: for the first time ever, city dwellers outnumbered the rural population. According to the Chinese statistics bureau, 691 million people now live in cities, amounting to more than 51% of the population. Yet this fact...
Green Philosophy
‘Green Philosophy: How to think seriously about the planet’ by Roger Scruton; Atlantic Books, 2012. 464pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 2 February 2012 Last year, Green MP, Caroline Lucas launched the “Home Front” initiative, which used the language of the Second World War to hark back to the joys of a war economy. In this rose-tinted world-view of global conflict, “31,000 tonnes of kitchen waste were...
Letter from China
Austin Williams | 28 December 2011 There has been much talk of China’s unsustainable property bubble recently with Western commentators taking unseemly delight in the prediction that China’s mighty economy is teetering on the brink. But reports of China’s imminent economic decline appear to be greatly exaggerated. After all, with current GDP growth slowing to a reasonably healthy 6 per cent, Chinese wealth creation...
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