Category Urban Design
I ♥ DC – An Alternative Guide to America’s Capital (and it’s Capitol)
When asked which American cities I love, the response ‘Washington, D.C.’ garners more quizzical responses and confused expressions than any other city on my list. I’m usually expected to justify this, so here is the list I produce to confound the doubters. 1 – The Metro System. DC’s Metro rail system is cleaner and cheaper than the […]
Testing Shared Space in Poynton
The final nominee in the Academy of Urbanism‘s Great Street category is Park Lane in Poynton. Located on the the busy A523 between Macclesfield and Stockport, it was Poynton Town Council’s adoption of a radical approach to dealing with this problem that resulted in it being short listed. Rejecting calls for a bypass, pedestrianisation or speed […]
‘The ideal of walkable urbanism’
The second high street on the Academy of Urbanism’s short list for ‘Great Street 2014’ is North Street in Bristol is located south of the river and the city centre in Southville. Originally an industrial district, accommodating a coal mine and large warehouses for the tobacco industry, and small terraced houses for workers in […]
10 things I love about Sydney (that you won’t find in your guidebooks)*
1. Food! From bill granger (always lower case) to Kylie Kwong, Neil Perry to Matt Moran, Australia is obsessed with food, its provenance and those who create. This is not a passing fad, this is a long standing national obsession. From celebrity chefs from all corners of the world to the expansive fish market in […]
Open door policy
On Wednesday I spent the afternoon with fellow Academicians from the Academy of Urbanism at Cockpit Arts and on Lamb’s Conduit Street in Camden. The street is the first of three short listed for The Great Street Award to be assessed, with Bristol’s North Street next week and Poynton High Street the week after. Named after William Lamb who, […]
Olympic Transport: Learning from the Past
Moving around a host city during the Olympic Games period is a tortuous process. With the sudden influx of large numbers of visitors, any transport system that operates reasonably well under normal conditions is placed under tremendous strain during such events. It is no surprise then, that host cities include transport infrastructure upgrades in their bid proposals […]
‘The Myth of The Compact City’ – A Response
When I signed up to the Cato Institute’s email newsletter, I was adhering to the old adage ‘keep your friends close, and your enemies closer’. Whilst I have no enemies at Cato it is good to know what nonsense the opposition is spouting, and a recent articles was just that. The headline annouces ‘The Myth […]
Kat Martindale 
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