ESSAY: The political engagement’s off
Austin Williams | October 2007 The e:petitions web page was launched on Number 10’s website in November 2006 ‘enabling anyone to address and deliver a petition directly to the Prime Minister.’ Presumably, someone thought that it would be a good wheeze to minimise the photo opportunities for aggreived members of the public to present a paper petition to the Prime Minister in full view of the waiting media. Oh well, back to the drawing...
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...
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...
Commuting: The Life Sentence
Austin Williams| 8 June 2004 The one aspect of the daily grind that is guaranteed to provoke an opinion is the commute to work. Congested roads, overcrowded trains, packed buses and sweaty tubes – it’s been said that if travel broadens the mind, commuting shrinks it back. Few would contest that the transport infrastructure is in a sorry state. But if the commuting experience is really so bad why do so many of us continue to do it? ...
Dan Dare, or Dan Daren't
‘Future Visions: Future Cities’ Conference, London School of Economics, 6 December 2003 Reviewed by Dave Clements | 11 December 2003 The Future Visions: Future Cities conference, supported by the Architects Journal, examined the role of the city through the prism of politics, culture and economics. Future Visions: Future Cities (FV: FC) was billed as an exploration of ‘city visions: past and present’, taking on the...
The Art of Travel
‘The Art of Travel’ by Alain De Botton; Penguin, 2003. 272pp Reviewed by Elisabetta Gasparoni-Abraham | 25 October 2003 This fascinating book, written by Alain De Botton, examines the diverse motives that moved great men of the past – like Charles Baudelaire and Edward Hopper, Gustave Flaubert, Alexander von Humbolt and William Wordsworth – to venture to new shores. He does this by juxtaposing their great...
Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything
‘Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything’ by James Gleick; Abacus, 1999. 326pp Reviewed by Peter Smith | 25 July 2003 Faster is a quick paced, entertaining description of the spread of technology and its impact on our lives. Unlike other superficial accounts Gleick locates recent developments in consumer goods and information technology within a broader context of development, citing railroads and the telephone...
Rocket Dreams
‘Rocket Dreams: How the Space Age Shaped Our Vision of a World Beyond’ by Marina Benjamin; Simon & Schuster, 2003. 242pp Reviewed by Martin Earnshaw | 27 June 2003 What became of our dreams of the aspirations that fuelled the ‘space age’ of the 50’s and 60’s? In this fascinating study Marina Benjamin takes on this problem in a fresh and innovative way. Rather than recount the familiar story of cut funds and scrapped...
Where’s my Space Age?
‘Where’s my Space Age?’ by Sean Topham; Prestel, 2003, pp160 Review by Austin Williams | 31 July 2003 This fascinating book, written by Seam Topham (who’s recent book ‘Blow Up’ was reviewed in the Architects’ Journal), asks ‘whatever happened to the space age?’ Constructed in three parts, with a two-page conclusion at the end, the book examines the historical moment of space...
The future of mobility
Three debates organised by the Transport Research Group at the Bloomberg Auditorium, London Reviewed by Dave Clements | June 2003 In this series of three debates we were asked to consider – are more cars a problem, do we need more infrastructure, and does mobility matter anyway? As Austin Williams, director of the Transport Research Group, noted in his address, transport policy has become a popular concern, and lost its former...
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