Architects cannot save the planet
Austin Williams | 13 July 2007 In a recent public statement by the chairman of BDP, the largest firm of architects in the UK, Tony McGuirk claims that architects long for a ‘far more positive social role.’ It all sounds very caring, until you realise that in today’s parlance, a ‘positive social role’ means that architects want to interfere more. It is really a shorthand for wanting to improve the behaviour, ethics and attitudes of the...
Something Stinks
Austin Williams | 28 February 2007 I’ve just finished reading Steven Johnson’s “The Ghost Map” about London’s 19th C cholera epidemics. Until Dr John Snow located the source of the problem in the water supply, everyone believed that the killer disease has something to do with the all-pervasive stench of the city; the ‘miasma’ permeating the over-crowded slums of the city. Using painstaking empirical data backed up by meticulous...
Estates: An Intimate History
‘Estates: An Intimate History’ by Lynsey Hanley; Granta Books, 2007. 256pp Reviewed by Dave Clements | 26 February 2007 There used to be a sign on an estate I’d walk through in Hackney on my way home that read ‘No mind games’. I don’t know how long it had been there, so subtle and unassuming, but soon enough it was back to ‘No ball games’. Some pre-Banksy surrealist prankster had managed in their own small way to...
Building Esteem or Housing Discontent
Dave Clements | 27 February 2007 The government’s obsession with child poverty has always struck me as a little strange. I don’t mean to pretend it doesn’t exist. But why child poverty? Why not address poverty itself? Children are only poor because their parents are poor surely, not because they are poor parents. Perhaps by foregrounding the vulnerable child, awkward questions about how people can be so poor today in an otherwise more...
In the dark about energy policy
Alastair Donald | 14 January 2007 The Times recently carried news of an ‘innovative’ plan to save energy and beat global warming. Apparently trials in Exeter suggest that removing lights and illuminated signage, and dimming thousands of streetlamps throughout Devon will be a useful way to cut carbon emissions and beat global warming. The manner in which city lights are viewed has changed over time, and offers some interesting...
Environmental Impact Assessments: Guidance Documents
Alastair Donald | 10 January 2007 Future Cities Project respond to DCLG’s consultation paper proposals from two publications on the subject of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) This paper responds to two publications: (i) proposed amendments to existing Circular 2/99 on EIA, and (ii) new draft EIA procedural and good practice guidance to replace the current publication “EIA Guide to Procedures”. The main changes...
Rod Eddington’s unedifying proposals
Austin Williams | 16 December 2006 Rod Eddington’s transport study is the latest in the long line of Treasury-driven policy initiatives designed to counter the lack of political certainty in government circles. While ministers are noticeable by their absence in real transport debates, refusing to discuss any clear initiative for fear that it might turn around and bite them on the bumper, it is much easier to have a third party do it...
Ornaments of the Metropolis
‘Ornaments of the Metropolis: Siegfried Kracauer and Modern Urban Culture’ by Henrik Reeh; MIT Press, 2006. 264pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 28 November 2006 Siegfried Kracauer is less well-known in this country than his friend and fellow critical theorist, Walter Benjamin. Even though they both wrote on the subject of urbanism, Kracauer effectively moved on from a critique of architecture to specialise in the sociology...
ESSAY: No carbon, lots of credit
Austin Williams | 12 October 2006 In the not so distant past, charitable giving to the poor and starving in Africa was seen as a legitimate – if reasonably passive way – or trying to change the world, improve the lot of humanity, raise their standards of living, and cock a snook at intransigent political and business leaders in the West. Charity-giving often simply represented a profound cynicism with big government, but it also...
Cities, People, Planet
‘Cities People Planet: Liveable Cities for a Sustainable World’ by Herbert Girardet; Wiley-Academy, 2004. 304pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 9 October 2006 This is effectively another reworking of the 10-year-old The Gaia Atlas of Cities: New Directions for Sustainable Urban Living. All the usual suspects are displayed, albeit with significant new additions and examples. As with Reader and Jacobs, Mesopotamia gets a...
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