"That prized garage space or curbside spot you’ve been yearning for may be costing you—and the city—in ways you never realized. A journey into the world of parking, where meter maids are under siege, everybody’s on the take, and the tickets keep on coming." A great article explaining some of the reasons why city planning there has led to Los Angeles being quite so car-centric.

"We made a walkshop! At sunset on Tuesday, undeterred by George Osborne, high winds and torrential rain, 17 of Yorkshire’s finest designers, technologists and geographers gathered to walk and talk, to see Leeds in a new light." Sounds good.

From the article: “In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving,” said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. “Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.”

A must-read interview with Greg Lindsay, author of Aerotropolis, a book that argues - if the interview is anything to go by, persuasively - that the cities of the 21st century will be designed around airports.

"Each time I turned a corner I found another gem. Among the seemingly numberless secret gardens, winding alleyways, tiny squares and ancient courtyards I found stories of the old city and its characters, many extraordinary and unlikely architectural survivors, and a wealth of evidence to remind one again that the City - built, burned, bombed, rebuilt and rebuilt again - is still a uniquely fascinating, rich and engaging place to wander through."

A guest post by James Griffioen pointing out that while there may not be big-box stores in Detroit, the city has plenty of places to get food (and not just junk, either).

"These young idealists were once united around a vision of using science and art to create a city of equal citizens. Their architecture fused William Morris with urban high-rise; ancient parkland with concrete. Utopia London examines the, social and political agendas of the time in which the city was rebuilt. The story goes on to explore how the meaning of these transformative buildings has been radically manipulated over subsequent decades. Inspired by the optimism of the past it poses the question; where do we go from here and now?" I didn't bookmark this before; this rectifies that.

'“We spend all this time thinking about cities in terms of their local details, their restaurants and museums and weather,” West says. “I had this hunch that there was something more, that every city was also shaped by a set of hidden laws.”' Possibly flawed, but definitely interesting, and the NYT article sets the research in an interesting context. I'm looking forward to what comes out when he tackles companies.

"In these maps, activity on the Foursquare network is aggregated onto a grid of ‘walkable’ cells (each one 400×400 meters in size) represented by dots. The size of each dot corresponds to the level of activity in that cell. By this process we can see social centers emerge in each city." "we can show how Paris contains a much more contiguously walkable structure than both New York and London." Interesting (and pretty) stuff.

"As a puzzled, stressed and curious newcomer, whether I quickly and fully embrace a system, or whether I avoid it for a long time is an interesting measure of how “usable” the system is." An interesting look at some issues that put people off buses. (I'd say London does reasonably well on these, assuming you speak English, but it's far from perfect even so; nobody knows about the five bus maps you can get, for example.)

"I wanted a nerdy planning-related poster for my wall (other than the periodic table of city planning), so I made one this week. I scoured Google Earth and measured that quintessentially American grid in about fifty downtowns around the country." There's a surprising variation in block sizes across the cities.

"Bressey didn’t really try to 'kill' London, of course, though parts of his Greater London plan for redirecting and accommodating increasing vehicular traffic certainly would’ve destroyed some great beauty" "Trafalgar Square as a triple-decker parking deck. (What can one say?)" A curiously British pre-war approach.

"instead of doing what a lot of internet-types are doing which is to see the city from above (maps and all) or from below (infrastructure and all) or even the surface of it (advertising and LED walls), I was going to focus on what makes my experience of cities (having lived in large ones like Amsterdam, Paris, London, Milan, Montreal) unique and enjoyable. A user’s experience."

Anna Minton in the Guardian: "Urban regeneration has seen entire districts pass into the hands of private companies – and their security guards". Most of the recent photography horror stories seem to start with a jobsworth security guard getting annoyed with someone taking a picture of a building, which should be legal, but in these half-private spaces, isn't.

Lovely stuff. Maybe I should set up an account for 30 St Mary Axe...

"A creative city is not goal oriented. Not only does it make little plans, it makes millions of little plans. It is adrift looking for its next opportunity. It is not made by an architect, but cultivated by its people."

Kevin O'Neill's notes from yesterday's talk at the British Library. I should go through mine and see how they compare, but this probably does a better job of capturing the event than I would have anyway. Hurrah.

A good post by Russell on the future of advertising. "We need to stop describing ad-supported things as 'free'. Their might be no exchange of cash but there's an exchange of attention and cognition." Lots to pick over here.

Shows the links between cities as indexed by Google. Certainly very nice to look at and play with.

A nice big dense post of resources about transport information, visualisation and how to increase usage

A fairly thoughtful piece on Thamesmead in south-east London, as the modernist estate approaches its fortieth birthday.

A fantastic piece about lifts, including phrases like "arrival immediate prediction lantern", "body ellipse" and "Improved Hoisting Apparatus", hung around the tale of Nicholas White, stuck in one for 41 hours. Lifts sound a lot like tube trains.

I've walked both north-south and east-west, and it's certainly an interesting experience. This chap sounds like he's done a much more interesting job of documenting his walk than I did, though. Sounds like he chose the same vertical too. Well well.

By Tom, after talking about NY state stopping the city's proposed congestion charge. "The positive network externalities generated by cities depend on density." "Suburban settlements tend to lose value as they grow denser, however."

Jonathan Meades on "The Endless City", a collection of articles on urbanism. He doesn't like it very much.

"confirmed nightwalker Kate Pullinger [asks] how could anyone not love a great city at night?" On walking at night in London and elsewhere, in the wake of a Jacqui Smith interview/furore.

"Apart from environmental frugality, innovation and the arts, what have cities ever done for us? There is one more thing and it is growing ever more important as global trade demands that our economies become more flexible: cities are resilient."

Instead of taking the cab (what, no rail service either?) Will Self walks from JFK to the heart of the city. Sounds like just the sort of stupid thing I'd have done once. Walking to London City would have been trivial from East London, though.

Mentioning the models of Iceland and the City of London

More interesting than part 1 (linked, if you're interested); touches on pentacostalism, suburbanism and its parallels to slums, disease and plenty more. A good read.