A few days ago, the Council’s Cabinet Member for Transport and Planning, Caro Wild shared a long thread on Twitter talking about the next LDP. I've linked to the thread below, but it touches on the quandary that councils and urban planners now find themselves in. I feel this requires further discussion, so, here goes...... Continue Reading →
Something to watch: How America bankrupted its cities…
https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0 Just a short one today, but as we’ve been talking about urban planning lately this short clip about the US love affair with car-dependent sprawl is interesting. I suspect that whilst funding arrangements between local authority and state are going to be different, the principles remain the same. The more you sprawl, the more... Continue Reading →
Car dependency and cultural deserts…
This article popped up on our Twitter timeline earlier, but whilst it is a couple of years old at this point, it is just as relevant now. Houses that were in the planning stage when this article in was written in 2018 will probably be seeing their first residents right around now. However, in 2020... Continue Reading →
Another year begins…
Well, we seem to have made it through 2020, possibly one of the most unsettling years I've had so far. However, whilst we can hope that 2021 will bring better times, initial signs point to yet more weirdness. Whilst we have vaccines for COVID-19 now, we still have an awful lot of people ill with... Continue Reading →
The Canal Quarter and Cardiff East Transport Scheme – Oooh, yes…
Let us take you back in time, to the days of Cardiff's industrial past. Barges brought coal, iron and steel up and down the valleys to the port and out into the wide world. But then at the turn of the 20th century the world changed. The barges started to disappear, the canals were paved... Continue Reading →
“You don’t pay tax…”
Spend enough time on social media in the "cycling" space and it won't be long before someone mentions the "T-word". "You don't pay tax" they'll say. Of course, most of us know that the "road tax" they allude to was abolished in the 1930s by Winston Churchill. What we have now is an emissions tax,... Continue Reading →
New Urbanism In A New World…
We're nearly a year into a global pandemic. It was just before Christmas in 2019 that news reports were suggesting that a mysterious new virus was starting to spread around China. By March 2020 we were in lockdown. Suddenly we came to realise just how temporary the status quo would be. Life happens... A couple... Continue Reading →
Get involved in the We Count project
If you live in Cardiff, living on a traffic sewer and have a mind for science, I think I may have an experiment for you. WeCount is a project operating in Cardiff that involves installing a sensor on an upstairs window facing the road. It will count the cars, trucks, bicycles and pedestrians that pass... Continue Reading →
The Right to Repair…
Have you noticed how the things we buy seem to be getting harder to repair lately? Whether we are talking about washing machines or phones it seems as though we are being led to replace the things we use day to day rather than fix them and keep them going. Surely the things we own... Continue Reading →
Poking fun at car ads…
Whilst we've talked about the sheer amount of money that is spent each year marketing cars to people, not to mention the realities those ads tend to gloss over, the ads themselves are often designed to sell a lifestyle or to prey on our insecurities. I recently came across a couple of spoof ads that... Continue Reading →