Welcome

This blog is at a very early stage of development; I’m hoping that it will encourage me to clarify my ideas, undertake research to develop them, and to enter into dialogue with those of like or skeptical mind.  I’m concerned about the mounting evidence that we’re in danger of irrevocably harming the planetary and local systems which make much of the world a hospitable place for mankind.  The risks are enormous – when I’m driving down the motorway at speed and there’s a fog bank ahead I might press on thinking it’s probably clear ahead, but I don’t.  I think of the possibility of a pile-up ahead and I slow down.  Mankind isn’t slowing down despite the possibility of catastrophe.

The link to urban space may seem remote. We need to take all measures to improve the ways in which we consume and support our environment.  More than half the world lives in cities and the proportion growing.  I’d like to help promote steps we can take to make cities places of delight, physically and socially; too often cities are polluted concrete jungles – designed for motor vehicles and not even doing that too well.  Well planned cities can be places of delight and at the same time contribute to reducing pollution in general and carbon dioxide emissions in particular.

In the UK there is ‘flight to the country’.  Conditions in cities and towns are driving many to move to the country leading suburbanisation, congestion and increasing emissions.  In the large parts of the world movement is in the opposite direction, India and China being notable examples.  Those countries have so far not applied the lessons we’ve learned in western Europe and North America and their cities often appear to provide terrible conditions.  I’d like to believe that this isn’t inevitable, and one of the things I’m hoping to use this blog for is to explore is the extent to which it is realistic to cater for the ambitions of the populations of those countries and yet provide good conditions and contribute towards environmental sustainability.