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From the blog
Riverside trees in London suffering from strange disease in summer heat...
You can view them on our Tate to Tate walk.
[See Walking in my Mind]
Traffic-free v emission-free: what sort of city centre do you want?
A couple of recent pieces on the BBC and ecogeek have posed alternative visions for more sustainable urban living.
One where cars are banned and whole swathes of the city are regularly given over to pedestrians and cyclists, and another where we drive around in fuel cell micro-cars that emit no more than a few drops of water from their exhaust pipe.
It's tempting to think that the former is a bit idealistic, while the latter is more pragmatic. We're always going to need cars, so let's concentrate on making them as green as possible.
The problem with this is that the hydrogen car has been 'coming soon' for decades now. OK, it might be a little nearer to production-vehicle status, but even bullish projections wouldn't see more than a few thousand of them on UK streets before 2020.
All the while urban pollution will be leading to tens of thousands of premature deaths, accidents leading to tens of thousands of injuries and deaths, and cancers (and other diseases) associated with inactive lifestyles leading to tens of thousands of deaths.
So waiting until a notional emission-free future arrives somewhere mid-century seems just a little bit complacent, particularly as it's likely to have no, or marginal, impact on two of the three challenges above. (And let's not forget that emission-free at point-of-use doesn't mean absolutely emission-free.) Practical traffic-calming and traffic-eliminating schemes, while tricky to implement, are tried and tested and work. Here and now.
Politically, of course, they can be a nightmare. Huge numbers of vested interests – bus companies, cabbies, retail outlets, delivery companies – may object. Residents and workers may object. But the irony is that after we've gone through the painful, multi-year (sometimes multi-decade) consultation process, when faced with the result, most people seem happy, even delighted, with the outcome.
If you polled people in London's Covent Garden market, or Birmingham's New Street or Edinburgh's Rose Street and asked “would this area be improved if cars were re-introduced?”, how many would say yes (even amongst the retailers)?
While more radical area-wide street closures pose bigger challenges, if Bogota can do this on a weekly basis, is it beyond our ken to do it in the UK? We can do one-offs – London's “The Sultan's Elephant” and Liverpool's “La Princesse” being two particularly memorable examples – but they're exceptions that prove the rule: vehicles still largely rule in our city centres.
Of course this isn't a binary debate – we can have both more pedestrianisation and zero-emission cars. But let's not pretend that the latter will solve all the problems or will be here any time soon in significant numbers.
How about this as a step in the right direction: a UK city committing to a car-free city centre every Sunday during the summer months in 2010? Any takers?
Beat the tube strike with walkit.com!
Are you a walkit.com user in London? Or you're planning to travel to the capital next week?
Are you prepared for the scheduled tube strike?
The RMT Union has announced strike action to commence at 18.59 hours on Tuesday 9 June through to 18.58 hours on Thursday 11 June 2009. (This Guardian page will keep you up to date with any developments.)
Should the tube strike go ahead it is expected to suspend most underground services as well as increase the use of other forms of public transport in the capital.
Although there is still the possibility that the strike will not go ahead why not use walkit.com to prepare an alternative route for any journeys that are affected by the action. Even if the strike is cancelled you can always enjoy your journey on foot avoiding the hot and crowded journey by tube.
Whether you need to get from a mainline station to the office or to an all important meeting, or you're in London for the day to see the sights use walkit.com to plan your journey on foot.
Don't forget to let friends, family and colleagues know too!
