No, literally, gaslight, in the streets, still: Two centuries after the first gas lights appeared on the streets of London, casting a romantic glow through the gloom, a few hundred remain in some of the most historic areas of the capital. But not for much longer. Westminster city council is planning to convert 299 gas lights to electricity, saying ( Read more... )

I am still boggling over this article (it is not a new article, but somebody linked it somewhere and I clicked, and have been going WOT ever since);
The north-south divide is as old as England itself.
I have a codfish who says It's All More Complicated (surprised?).
The idea of the entirety of England south of the Trent being a weird pastoral- ( Read more... )

Toxic masculinity is built into the fabric of our urban spaces: okay, I have walked around certain cityscapes and thought 'urgent phallic look, what' and 'mi patriarkle thrust, I show u it', but you know, I could live with a certain amount of upthrusting architecture providing there was an adequate provision of public loos, which are not mentioned ( Read more... )

No, seriously, statues do not just gently rise out of the ground to commemorate individuals, they are the produce of choices and decisions and negotiations and political agendas.

Like any feature of the built environment, they may come to feel like natural features of the landscape and the way it's always been, but a) they are not and b) it's ( Read more... )

Further to the report about exclusion of children from social housing from playground in common area: More segregated playgrounds revealed: 'We just play in the carpark' [A] subsequent investigation has revealed that the story was not unique. As many as half a dozen developments across London - most of them relatively new, or featuring recent ( Read more... )

Dept of, The rich man in his castle, the poor man at the gate: children in social housing blocked from communal playground.
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Dept of, birds finding unlikely urban niches: Mumbai pollution 'perfect' for flamingos. On a much smaller scale, I spotted one of London's many parakeets in the pocket park behind the house yesterday.
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Dept of, I have a ( Read more... )

For some while partner and I have been mooting a short city break to Leeds, to undertake various jaunts of a cultural nature in the vicinity.
So we have now actually done so, arriving early this afternoon.
So far we have done the Art Gallery, the Henry Moore Institute, and the Chippendale exhibition at the City Museum, as well as seeing a certain ( Read more... )

Horseshoe bus seats introduced to encourage passengers to talk to each other.
(And I really don't think it's going to discourage people putting their bags on the seats: in fact I envisage them building a defensive redoubt of the things.)
People don't want to talk to one another on public transport, or at least, not to random strangers. I am ( Read more... )

Or, Nature comes to the city, further to yesterday's thoughts.
Last night on the way home a - probably youngish - fox crossed our path.
Thinking further on the migration of vulpes vulpes into the urban environment, do we not suppose that elderly foxes go, 'These young foxes could not tell a vole from a shrew or a fieldmouse: but ask them whether ( Read more... )

Studies show that children are better at identifying Pokémon characters than real animals and plants.
You know what? Let's us go back to the 1940s and all those evacuees who were grossed out at the revelation that milk came from cows rather than nice clean bottles.
Or to c. 1920 and the formation of various youth organisations which were about ( Read more... )