A beautiful shot of Francisco Airport bathed in fog and sun.
Earth from the ISS
A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night.
No longer updated, this was an (increasingly visual) digital scrapbook of pixelated sorts from Jonathan Bainbridge, a recently graduated town & landscape planner from the North East of England.
Now writing at http://bainbridge.me and posting photography at http://500px.com/renascens
Three faces of feminism: Louise Mensch, Laurie Penny, & Jodie Marsh
A bit of a political blog, but an excellent read all the same. Beautifully written.
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Four of London’s Royal Parks, circa 1833: Regent’s Park, Hyde Park and Green Park/St. James’s Park. Click the links to view bigger (it’s a must!).
How to Dice an Onion
A prettier video of onion chopping I have never seen.
(via Kottke)
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To celebrate the 1951 Festival of Britain, the Southbank Centre have created a lively urban environment on the London Southbank, centred around four different ‘lands’ - Land, Seaside, Power and Production and People of Britain.
Far from feeling contrived, the whole space feels natural and vibrant. The massive mix of spaces, structures and activities, combined with a clever use of texture and sounds, stimulates the senses! It is thronged in the evenings with both locals and tourists - visible evidence of its success. It is a must visit for anyone in London and the roof top bar is THE place to watch the sun set over London!!
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There can be no doubt that in England the social war is already being waged. Everyone looks after his own interests and fights only for himself against all comers. Whether in doing so he injures those who are his declared enemies is simply a matter of selfish calculation as to whether such action be to his advantage or not. It no longer occurs to anybody to come to a friendly understanding with his neighbours. All differences of opinion are settled by threats, by invoking the courts, or even by taking the law into one’s own hands. In short, everyone sees in his neighbour a rival to be elbowed aside, or at best a victim to be exploited for his own ends.
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845)
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Back to normal?
Great piece by Wouter Vanstiphout about the relationship between urban politics and urban design on the one hand, and concentrations of marginality, violence and riots on the other.
“It is much too soon to say anything about the relationship between the gentrification of Brixton, or the coming of the Olympics to London, and the current explosion of violent alienation. But if we imagine another kind of urban politics, one that does not take into account a marketable image of the city, but the reality of the entire community, it would probably have entirely different priorities.
The first would be to work against the ever sharpening inequality of London, making it one of the unfairest cities in Europe, in poverty levels, education, crime and other indicators.
But then the reality of urban riots is that they have always turned out to be the opposite of a learning experience for a city. Riots have nearly always resulted in politicians simplifying the problem even more, and citizens looking away even further.
After a riot your average city will become more afraid, more authoritarian, more segregated, more exclusive and less tolerant. That is the real tragedy of the post-war western urban riot, first it shocks and terrifies us, then for a moment it makes us see flashes of the kind of city we should be working towards, which then fades away into the darkness. Back to normal.”
