Book Review: The Writing on the Wall
by Martin Earnshaw | 7 June 2014 If you’ve ever wondered how much of your life you have wasted on Social Media, Facebook will tell you with its new app. Despite the widespread assertion that time spent on the internet is time wasted, enthusiasts of new technology stress its benefits. What both sides don’t realise, according to Tom Standage’s recent book, is that these debates have raged for longer than most people think. According to...
The Practical Possibilist
Population 10 Billion: The Coming Demographic Crisis and How to Survive It by Danny Dorling; Constable, 2013. 448pp Reviewed by Martin Earnshaw | 14 October 2013 The recent news that the UK is experiencing a mini baby boom was greeted with predictable panic about how Britain’s services would cope. From worries about an ageing population to the familiar refrain (1) about depleted resources, population has long been a lightning rod for...
Europe and China: Strategic Partners or Rivals?
Just half a century after De Gaulle’s vision that Europe (‘from the Atlantic to the Urals’) would decide the destiny of the world, Europe looks anything like a global powerhouse. With the euro falling apart, European authority is regarded by many, with barely concealed disdain. From Britain to Bulgaria, the European Union is seldom mentioned without the suffix ‘crisis’, and the phrase ‘European integration’ is widely held to be an...
The uncivil civility of Richard Rogers
By Richard J Williams | 31 July 2013 The idea of ‘civility’ crops up a lot at Richard Rogers’s exhibition. It’s there right from the start in a room decked out in orange vinyl, with a series of panels laying out Rogers’s ‘ethos’. In practice, it’s most clearly represented in Rogers’s non-architectural work, such as his chairmanship of the New Labour government’s Urban Task Force (1999), his work as London’s architecture ‘tsar’ for...
Military Urbanism?
‘Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism’ by Stephen Graham; Verso, 2011. 402pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 18 December 2012 Urban transformation has often been considered to be a virtue, but some view it differently; as a source of instability and conflict. The United Nations calls cities “dynamic centres of creativity, commerce and culture” but adds that they are “better known for their chaos and grime”....
The world, one sketch at a time
‘The Art of Urban Sketching: Drawing on Location Around the World’ by Gabriel Campanario; Quarry Books, 2012. 320pp Reviewed by Anna Gibb | 29 November 2012 A renaissance in sketching is occurring. While advances in technology continue and we now have smartphones that allow us to document our surroundings in an instant, for many people there remains something both seductive and unique about a hand drawing. The Art of Urban...
The Great Stagnation
Instead of focussing merely on the recent period of financial turmoil, The Great Stagnation encourages a longer term view.
Venice: Myth and Reality
The ambition of dominating the seas was celebrated through the formulation of rituals, ceremonies and myths.
Britain after the riots
This book presents arguments that almost completely undermine the independence of children as well as adults.
I run therefore I am!
‘It is the presence of competition itself that acts as a permanent barrier between the two types of runner’
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