Saving the planet
‘How We Can Save The Planet’ by Mayer Hillman; Penguin, 2004. 192pp Reviewed by Dave Clements | 5 June 2004 We will live in a ‘carbon-literate’ society, where carbon is a parallel currency and carbon credits tradable on ‘cbay’. We will exist within the confines of carbon budgeting, subjecting ourselves to a regime analogous to our present day penchant for calorie counting with weekly visits to Carbon Watchers. Our...
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...
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...
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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