The road used to be for pedestrians first, then carts, horses and donkeys joined a bit later. Then came the bicycle, the tramcar, the petrol car and the truck. Mostly in that order. Some places have sledges and skis as well apparently. Boats maybe too? Concepts for streets The street used to be a place … Read more Sharing is caring. Just not while moving.
My daily train departs the city every 50 minutes. It is quite handy not to miss it. Countdown to my daily train departure home: T-16 min I wanted to do some last minute shopping. I enter the market, buy a few things I want to eat this weekend. Pay, smile to the cashier as he … Read more In a rush
Designing a road for traffic is much like designing a pipe for water flow. The first hint is the similarity of language used. In traffic engineering they talk about traffic waves, traffic flows or traffic stream. I especially like “Jam Density”. Yum. They even use similar mathematical models as in hydrodynamics. Cars move in packs, like water … Read more Peak Hour
Who has the right to the land and its space? Even the countryside can feel differently depending on how it is managed. In Germany and many other countries in Europe you can walk across other people’s land without fearing that they might shoot you. In England it’s romantically called ‘the right to roam’ . If … Read more The strategy of the commons
This weekend I had the privilege to join an agroforestry farm tour in Bambra, held by Rowan Reid, author of Heartwood, which I previously reviewed here. Apart from being in a beautiful part of the world, the farm was his home and also laboratory. Claire and Rowan lived there since 1987 and planted and cared … Read more What we don’t value, we don’t protect
I went to an interesting event organised by finding infinity . There would be two speakers that night, one of them was Sam Gosling, a Magnum PI-ish psychology professor from Austin, Texas and Timothy Hill, serious and strangely funny architect from his own firm Partners Hill. While Timothy’s talk was very interesting in his own right (check … Read more What your stuff says about you
This week was Melbourne Cup. I don’t want to give it more attention that it already received or deserves but here is the summary for those unfamiliar with the concept. Every year there is a horse race in Melbourne (but also other cities in Australia). A few horses with tiny jockeys on them run in … Read more What celebrations do for us