“Walkability” is a red herring. City life comes from connectedness
In America, almost all of the infrastructure we’ve built since the mid-century is disconnected.
infrastructure
Walkability is not just about walking
Walkable cities are places that do best what cities are meant to do: contain and display human life with all of its variety, tension, diversity, struggle and beauty.
Limestone whitewash: An old material with practical benefits
Modern paints contain toxic chemicals that linger in our homes and bodies, while traditional lime-based whitewash offers a low-energy, low-tox alternative that brightens buildings, protects surfaces and can even ‘sweeten’ acidic soils to boost fertility.
Copenhagen’s bike lanes offer a model for human connection in the AI era
In Copenhagen, everyday biking isn’t just transport, it’s a multisensory antidote to screen-bound, AI-driven life. Safe, ‘8–80’ cycling infrastructure fosters real-world connection, community, and a deeper human intelligence rooted in place.
The Sahara’s rare floods prompt a rethink of how arid regions manage water in a warming world
Intense floods in Algeria’s Sahara in 2024 exposed how modern desert cities shed water instead of storing it. Redesigning infrastructure to hold rain, not rush it away, could help turn arid regions into resilient, living landscapes.
Elevator ‘crisis’ as symptom of our infrastructure predicament
A long-running elevator outage at my favorite cinema lead me to find out about America’s “elevator crisis.” It’s a symptom of our infrastructure predicament.
“Land value return” and building a more equitable economy
Employing the economics of sharing more widely would be a good way to show that “ethical economics” is not necessarily an oxymoron. It might even allow people of different political perspectives to find common ground for solving real environmental and economic problems while reducing tax burdens as well.
The American infrastructure, ancient Rome and ‘Limits to Growth’
The most important thing about ‘infrastructure’ not being discussed is that we keep adding more of it every day. That is already having serious consequences which will only get worse if we stay on our course of endless expansion.
Of semiconductors, water, Martian rovers and converging risks
Recently, we Earthlings have been seeing amazing images from the surface of Mars courtesy of NASA’s Perseverance rover. Meanwhile, here on planet Earth, much of the high-tech production system that helped to produce the rover is in a spot of trouble.
Britain’s Infrastructure is Breaking Down. And Here’s Why No One’s Fixing It
The spirit we need is that summed up by the librarian who rhapsodises to Klinenberg about his branch: “The library really is a palace. It bestows nobility on people who can’t otherwise afford a shred of it. People need to have nobility and dignity in their lives. And, you know, they need other people to recognise it in them too.”
The Mobility Maze
Mobility, after all, is generally less important to people than accessibility. When we go somewhere it’s not the movement that’s valuable, it’s the access to something – a school, shopping, a workplace, a friend’s house or a park – that really counts.
Can we create a durable future?
Our contemporary world is designed for impermanence — which also makes it resource- and energy-intensive as we invent, disseminate and discard a sea of gadgets, tear down and build an endless array of buildings, and junk and manufacture vehicles in an ever-repeating cycle. If we want to build a durable culture, we will have to slow down and rescale our lives and the life of our societies. But what would the outlines of such a culture look like?
