Some of what I said to Randy Richmond for his essay about London’s identity doesn’t quite ring true to me a month after I said it (my fault, not his), but it isn’t wrong either. [Read this if you're interested in the conversation. It's not at the finished stage of, like, "10 things you need to [...]
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Revitalizing downtown is an ever-relevant topic in London, as I’m sure it is in most cities. (There may be cities where downtown isn’t an important part of the story; those are cities I don’t want to live in.) Last night we had a bit of a thing here as part of Downtown London and the [...]
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It took me most of my young life to figure this out. After growing up as a precocious political junkie I got jaded pretty early. I grew up in a rural conservative family but somehow, deep-down I’m an urban technophile who often hopes there’s no problem that walkable neighbourhoods and Twitter hashtags can’t solve. In [...]
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Yesterday a new website launched, Action London 2010, providing Londoners what promises to be a textbook perfect case study on dos and don’ts of civic engagement in the digital age. They say (and have demonstrated they are) working to improve the site quickly, to their credit. I wasn’t going to post this but I eventually decided to lay [...]
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Interesting clip from a longer film based on The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William H. Whyte (probably better-know for his monumental book, The Organization Man). I’m sure some of it is outdated (e.g. nothing about skateboarders… or, MOUNTAIN BIKES!) but most of the observations about human behaviour and interaction I’m sure hold true. Even [...]
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This is a more positive followup to yesterday’s post, trying to work out what the key idea or shared ethic might be for London’s economy. I’ve already expressed doubts about the “transporation hub” idea here and here. It isn’t a bad idea to beef up London’s transportation capacity as one specific part of a broader plan, but [...]
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I’ve sort of been on vacation so I’m a little late with this. Here’s Paul Romer making his case for charter cities: The TED Blog (via Design Thinking) conveys the gist better than I possibly could. It’s about making ways to change the rules: China, he says, demonstrates both the strengths and weaknesses of working with rules. [...]
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Boston’s case illustrates the difficulty you’d have establishing a new startup hub this late in the game. If you wanted to create a startup hub by reproducing the way existing ones happened, the way to do it would be to establish a first-rate research university in a place so nice that rich people wanted to live there. [...]
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Disappointed but not surprised by the report that came out yesterday (summary, via). I had a bit invested in this since I wrote about the expected proposals back in January. At first glance I would seem to be proven wrong because I suggested that London risks being marginalized if we don’t assume more responsibility for our [...]
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