A piece from 2014, on the 'interesting' relationship between London and planning: "London’s ego: Masterplanning a city that resists masterplan" (Have a friend link, friends) medium.com/dark-matter-...

London’s Ego

Masterplanning a city that resists masterplans

medium.com

"“In America,” as Susan Sontag noted in 1977, “the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it"' (What an amazing collection at this exhibition—all the greats on show) observer.co.uk/culture/phot...

Portrait of a City at Dulwich Picture Gallery – a definit...

Works by Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand are among the many era-defining images packed into an exhibition tracing the evolution of US cityscapes

observer.co.uk

"BYD’s answer to the kei car — a class of boxy compact vehicles suited for Japan’s narrow roads and tight parking spaces — is the Racco, which the company said on Tuesday could cost less than ¥2mn ($12,000)...It will offer a range of 210km to 320km" giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

BYD takes on Japan’s ‘kei’ car market with tiny EV

Chinese company challenges Toyota on home turf in bid to become world’s largest carmaker in five years

giftarticle.ft.com

Caligra 100 developer terminal: “A mini-PC designed for offices, workshops, labs, and factories. Built around a full-size mechanical keyboard, with tool storage and a removable lid. c100 folds with its magnetic hinge, for closed operation or reclaiming bench space” (Fascinating) caligra.com/c100/

Caligra c100 Developer Terminal

Explore the c100 hardware platform purpose-built for expert workflows.

caligra.com

“the new way of playing, of working out their position not according to preset formulas but through constantly evolving reference to the opponent, their teammates, the ball and the space, to internalise the processes until they became instinctive” www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Franco Baresi was not only the captain but the moral heart of great Milan team

Centre-back defined era of hard Italian defending and collection of honours are eternal proof of his class

theguardian.com

“For-profit care homes in England deliver lower-quality care when most of their residents are funded by the state, while charity- and council-run homes maintain more consistent standards regardless of residents’ ability to pay” (surprise surprise) www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/news/new-stu...

New study finds that for-profit care homes with more state-funded residents receive worse care

A new study, led by Dr Anders Bach-Mortensen and Dr Ben Goodair at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government, finds that for-profit care homes are more likely to receive poor inspection ratin...

bsg.ox.ac.uk

Excellent piece from my colleague @mazzucatom.bsky.social on the importance of public pools, variously, esp in UK (though quotes yours truly on the Australian public pool as the closest thing to a piazza, here) open.substack.com/pub/marianam...

Who Gets to Swim?

Public pools, a tale of two cities, and the moonshot for a swimmable city

open.substack.com

“Better forestry, Luo argued, now turns on more than the number of trees in the ground. It depends on when they are planted, which species are chosen, and how the stands are managed across a full rotation” woodcentral.com.au/china-plante...

China's Planted Forests Outgrow Nature. But the Carbon Edge Won't Last

New research finds China's Great Green Wall is greening 66% faster than its native forests — but the carbon advantage fades within 40 years.

woodcentral.com.au

“Lime holds … local monopolies that a rival can’t simply buy its way into,” he said.” (Local municipal players, however, could beat Lime quite easily, by being local. Municipalities can offer a public bike sharing service, owned in public, regulating out others) www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

How do Lime’s ebikes make money? Share market debut sheds light on finances

The firm’s public listing in June gives an insight into a question analysts have been wondering for years: how does this business stack up?

theguardian.com

“In the early stages of a country’s urbanization process, large cities grow fastest. At later stages, cities of all sizes grow at similar rates. Our projections based on this pattern suggest that the rise of large cities will slow down but not stop” www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

I have an essay in a new book about the new Ginza Sony Park building in Tokyo. It’s a beautiful book documenting the design process of a very intriguing building. Many thanks to Ryo Shirai, and the Sony team, for asking me to write www.ginzasonypark.com/e/activity/0...

“Our natural behaviour is to find fault, dig out an individual or heap praise on one individual. We have to buy into the idea that when we win, it’s the collective and when we lose, it’s the collective” (great analysis from Emma Hayes—applies beyond than football) www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Masters of time and space, Spain’s dominance comes from deep-rooted principles | Emma Hayes

Spain’s brilliance isn’t just about Rodri or Lamine Yamal – it’s all about the collective culture developed over many years

theguardian.com

Back in 2022, I did some very early work — what I call 'snowplough mode' — on the strategic design of the Punkt MC03 phone (having previously done similar on the MP02), and it's great to see the platform gaining in confidence now, via their own aphids www.apostrophynow.com/why-we-rebui...

Why AphyOS Rebuilt the Mobile OS Architecture from the Kernel Up

Standard mobile architectures often expose decrypted sandboxed data at the hardware layer via un-audited vendor frameworks. In this op-ed, Petter Neby outlines how AphyOS purifies the smartphone archi...

apostrophynow.com

“It’s not the children who have stopped. It’s their grandparents: Americans don’t read very much now and haven’t for at least a few decades … (But the decline) appears to be driven overwhelmingly by a particular cohort: older Americans” messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/rend...

Lovely opening yesterday of the new Nightingale Wilam Ganga housing in Brunswick, designed by Six Degrees Architects and pulled together—as ever, somewhat heroically, given the prevailing conditions in Melbourne—by Nightingale Housing. Carefully designed, well-built, affordable, next to station.

(The value of writing up projects that don't happen, as well as those that do, is that they may happen at a later date and you've already spent a decade thinking about them. My colleagues and I are working on a small research project in Australia which is essentially this) medium.com/dark-matter-...

The New Forest

Fixing the housing crisis by fixing the flooding crisis—and vice versa

medium.com

If other news was reported like climate change:

Conor@ernekid.bsky.social · 2mo ago

For Christ’s sake RTE can we have a story about climate change that isn’t accompanied by a jolly picture of people on the beach?

“the trash does not stop” www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

‘The trash does not stop’: life among the garbage mountains of Jakarta, the world’s biggest city

Indonesia’s government is grappling with how to manage waste at Bantar Gebang – Jakarta’s largest landfill – which supports the livelihood of thousands of waste pickers

theguardian.com

Unwitting juxtapositions in Architecture Australia mag. These two stories right next to each other, in the email I just received, with no comment as to their relationship: architectureau.com/articles/des... versus landscapeaustralia.com/articles/mem...

Design for ‘tallest’ residential towers in Sydney approved

A $3.5 billion project for twin towers, designed by FJC Studio in collaboration with Trias Studio, Aileen Sage and Polly Harbison Design, has been greenlit in Sydney.

architectureau.com

"Wenche Selmer. What Can You Live Without?: Wenche Selmer pursued the ideal of a rich life based on simple means. She perfected the idea of the Norwegian cabin: frugal, useful and adapted to the environment." www.nasjonalmuseet.no/en/exhibitio...

Wenche Selmer. What Can You Live Without?

Wenche Selmer pursued the ideal of a rich life based on simple means. She perfected the idea of the Norwegian cabin: frugal, useful and adapted to the environment.

nasjonalmuseet.no

"Our new report, Planning Teams for the Future...explores how planning services can evolve over the coming decade to become more resilient, digitally enabled and strategically focused" (From the ever-excellent Public Practice) www.publicpractice.org.uk/reports/plan...

Planning Teams for the Future Report

Our new report, Planning Teams for the Future, explores how planning services can evolve over the coming decade to become more resilient, digitally enabled and strategically focused.

publicpractice.org.uk

“England needs fewer council homes, not more” (The Economist often reads like a parody of itself; as if The Onion edited in the style of Milton Friedman. This article is such nonsense. Even they admit their suggestion “sounds harsh”. Correction: it is heinous) economist.com/leaders/2026...

England needs fewer council homes, not more

Andy Burnham’s plan is no way to ease the housing crisis

economist.com

(I have a new essay in this book on Ginza Sony Park) www.ginzasonypark.com/activity/025/

12年の軌跡の余白 –いつか誰かが立ち戻れる場所としての本｜アクティビティ｜Ginza Sony Park

書籍「Document of Ginza Sony Park Project」に込めた思い

ginzasonypark.com

See, another problem* with allowing people to buy SUVs (or make them in the first place) their size (roughly that of an APC) makes crossing the road even harder. I cross here on my bike every day but now have to inch out into the road to see what’s coming, and of course I can’t be seen either.

William Morris: “The resources of nature, mainly the land and those other things which can only be used for the reproduction of wealth and which are the effect of social work, should not be owned in severalty, but by the whole community for the benefit of the whole.” (WM FTW)

“A small nation chose to let its children be children – to play, to wander between sports, to enjoy it. It was never meant to produce a team that could beat Brazil… What matters is that a whole country got to stand at the touchline and watch its kids fly” www.theguardian.com/football/202...

No league tables, no trophies: how Norway made sport fun for kids – and built a football team that beat Brazil

The country’s model prioritises joy while offering youngsters choice – and Erling Haaland’s World Cup exploits show that it works

theguardian.com

“Making Space for Birdsong and Bicycles in Paris: 5 lessons from a city that dared to reimagine its public realm” medium.com/reimagining-...

Making Space for Birdsong and Bicycles in Paris

5 lessons from a city that dared to reimagine its public realm

medium.com

“Cooling Infrastructures are Social as well as Technical” (Excellent, as ever, from @johnthackara.bsky.social) thackara.com/earthrepair/...

Is air conditioning modern? — John Thackara

Cooling Infrastructures are Social as well as Technical As a punishing heatwave headed for a fourth week here in France, a familiar cry went up from the country’s exhausted citizens: “The government ...

thackara.com

“The UK government should follow the example of a growing number of global cities and declare a moratorium on new AI datacentres until ministers can produces a credible, needs-based plan for how many of these we need, where and what for” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Curry, bagels … and AI? Londoners fight plan for huge datacentre in Brick Lane

Residents and council say creating affordable housing is more urgent than ‘high-frequency trading’ in nearby City

theguardian.com