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...
Technology and Obsolescence
‘Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America’ by Giles Slade; Harvard University Press, 2007. 336pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 30 November 2007 I wasn’t looking forward to this book. The title seemed to sum up two popular contemporary pastimes, a despondency about societal progress and a condescension towards American (over)consumption. With its dust-jacket displaying a mountain of discarded computer...
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...
Care Matters: Green Paper
Future Cities Project | 28 November 2006 Future Cities Project respond to ‘Care Matters: Transforming the Lives of Children and Young People in Care’, a Green paper from the Department for Education. While the Government expresses confidence that the proposals set out in this Green Paper will deliver a step change in the outcomes of children in care, for all the grandiose rhetoric the proposals are in fact rather modest....
Community Anchors
Dave Clements | 4 November 2006 In the latest issue of Interchanges, a newsletter produced by the Centre for Creative Communities, the strapline reads ‘Community? What Community?’ It notes the media’s obsession with the ongoing ‘fragmentation of society’, and New Labour’s worries over ‘community cohesion’, that also features strongly in the Local Government White Paper published last week. But it then descends into the...
Does Every Child really Matter?
Dave Clements | 30 October 2006 At his trial, Manning said that Kouao [his partner, the girl’s great aunt] would strike Victoria on a daily basis with a shoe, a coat hanger and a wooden cooking spoon and would strike her on her toes with a hammer. Victoria’s blood was found on Manning’s football boots. Manning admitted that at times he would hit Victoria with a bicycle chain. Chillingly, he said, ‘You could beat her and she wouldn’t...
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...
Design Like You Give A Damn
‘Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses To Humanitarian Crises’ by Architecture for Humanity (Eds), Thames & Hudson, 2006. 336pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 9 September 2006 Cameron Sinclair’s long-awaited book begins with a personal journey of social and ethical awareness, which has taken him from a lowly ‘CAD monkey’, as he describes himself, to a fully-fledged professional humanitarian. He now heads...
Tackling Overcrowding in England: A Discussion Paper
Dave Clements | 14 September 2006 Future Cities Project respond to ‘Tackling Overcrowding in England’, a consultation paper by the Department for Communities and Local Government, September 2006. ‘Increasing housing supply and reducing overcrowding will be priorities for this Government.’ The remit of this consultation paper ostensibly concerned with ‘tackling overcrowding’ is so curtailed by the unspoken premise of...
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