Venice: Myth and Reality
The ambition of dominating the seas was celebrated through the formulation of rituals, ceremonies and myths.
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...
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...
Emerging Africa
‘Emerging Africa: how 17 countries are leading the way’ by Steven C. Radelet; Center for Global Development, 2010. 169pp Reviewed by Joel Cohen | 22 August 2012 On the 50th anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart, Nigerian author Chinua Achebe was asked “Are things really falling apart or are they starting to come back together in Africa?” His reply was incisive: “It’s always happening both of them. It depends on where you...
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...
This Christmas, let’s all lift a glass to mark the birth of Homo sapiens urbanus
Alastair Donald | 21 December 2011 The real problem today isn’t Eastern slums but the low horizons of Western urbanists. MORE than half the world’s population now lives in cities. And with 1m people every week migrating to emerging cities, all developing regions, including Africa, are expected to have more people living in urban than rural areas by 2030. Across the planet, Homo sapiens will have become Homo sapiens urbanus. In this,...
The Energy Report
The Energy Report by WWF, Ecofys and AMO; January 2011, 253pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | February 2011 If you enjoy reading end of year accounts, or poring over corporate brochures, you will love The Energy Report – the eco-equivalent of a BP audit statement. Written by a huge number of people from WWF, together with some from Ecofys (a Dutch renewable energy consultancy), it has been designed by AMO, the consulting arm of...
Two Cases for the (Floods) Defence
‘Atlas of the New Dutch Water Defence Line’ (010 Publishers) & ‘Facing up to rising sea levels (Building Futures, RIBA) Reviewed by Austin Williams | February 2010 Contrary to the implication in its title, the Atlas of the New Dutch Water Defence Line has nothing to do with global warming and flood management. The book is a historical assessment of the network of watercourses known as the Nieuwe Hollandse...
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