Therapy for Gaia
Austin Williams | 22 May 2003 For those who believe in the concept of Gaia – the planet as a living organism – the latest European Environment Agency (EEA) report reads like a sick note. Whereas some environmentalists have diagnosed the planet as terminally ill, the EEA takes a more modern approach and simply suggests that it is in need of therapy. Forests are “damaged”; the soil is “degraded”; fish...
Scared out of the sky
Peter Smith | 7 March 2003 Statistics that tell us we are 155 times more likely to die in a car crash than on an aeroplane have consistently failed to reassure a sizeable minority who are frightened of air travel (1). Now, the air industry’s overreaction to terror threats is fuelling the post-9/11 fear of flying. Stunts like the recent deployment of armed troops to most major UK airports and tanks to London Heathrow to guard...
The Smoke clears
Austin Williams | 19 December 2002 In a recent Greater London Authority (GLA) publication, Ken Livingstone remembers the London fog of 1952. ‘Its main impact’, he says, ‘was that we didn’t have to go to school for a few days’ (1). For an event that reputedly killed thousands of London residents, this might not seem the most empathetic response of the Mayor of London, but smogs were often treated as no...
Cities for a Small Country
‘Cities for a Small Country: The Future of Cities’ by Anne Power and Richard Rogers; Faber and Faber, 2000. 314pp Review by Austin Williams | 11 January 2001 In his introduction Will Hutton kicks off the argument that more socially balanced neighbourhoods ‘have to be constructed and designed’. There then follows 300 pages of morally charged argument about how to do it and why. ‘Social mix’ figures...
Gimme Shelter
Austin Williams | 2 June 2003 Several years ago, Martin Valatin, representing the (non-Orwellian) organization Architects for Peace and Social Responsibility, wrote glowingly about the Mathare squatter settlement in Kenya – a place where 400,000 human beings were forced to live in an abandoned quarry. “In spite of the crime, drugs and unsanitary congestion there’s a spatial richness in places like Mathare,” he...
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