"Sarah Wigglesworth Architects has devised a scheme that could save east London flats Robin Hood Gardens from the bulldozers. The architect has shown how the blocks could be remodelled into modern family homes." I doubt this has any chance given the priorities of Tower Hamlets and central government, but it'd be nice if it did.

"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.

""Many excellent books have been written about Lakeland but the best literature of all for the walker has been published by the Director General of the Ordnance Survey," Alfred Wainwright wrote over half a century ago in the introduction to his pictorial guides to the Lake District."

"Mitchell Taylor Workshop director Piers Taylor said it had recently received a letter from British Land confirming it had won the Leadenhall site competition but also giving reasons why the developer was now putting its temporary plans on hold. Taylor added: “I think it’s all about [developers] being seeing to be doing rather than actually doing.”

'Gagosian Gallery London will present "Crash," a major group exhibition opening on 11 February 2010, which takes its title from the famous novel by JG Ballard.'

Momus on the Barbican. "[It] has grown on me. It has its own charm. With age, it's becoming more weird, eccentric and unique. Yesterday, before running through the Brel show in the big theatre, I had a good rummage through the building." I think it does perhaps take time and effort to like the place.

"The mania for recladding post-war high-rise office or council blocks is more pronounced in some places than others, but it extends all over Europe. It was very popular in the eighties and nineties with municipal towers, where it was (rather bafflingly) thought that encasing the buildings in plastic would remove the stigma of poverty." I miss the old concrete Stock Exchange Tower.

"It is hard to believe that it is five years since Portsmouth’s Tricorn Centre (1962-7) was demolished, to the sound of the 1812 Overture. Nothing has happened to the site, but the building’s busy campaigners have produced this affectionate celebration." A good review of an interesting-sounding book.

"John Madin’s 1974 Birmingham Central Library was designed to be flexible, for a possible future without books. English Heritage would like to see it listed, but the city’s political elite say it is impossible to refurbish for modern needs and want it demolished." Shame.

Jonathan Glancey on the Javelin trains that will run from St Pancras to Kent (and the Olympics, in 2012). He's right; it is a damned shame (especially given how good BR's engineering was, with the APT being strangled before it could work out its teething troubles while the Intercity was an under-appreciated HST, compromised mainly by the tracks it had to deal with.

"One Sunday in recent memory, accompanied by a, e, e, o, and no doubt numerous other vowels that failed to make their presence known to us as we walked with both purpose and purposelessness from the Barbican on to admire the various works of Berthold Lubetkin that are scattered around the broken city." Nice photos, including one of the MIlton Court highwalk open wound. Wonderfully irreverent.

Jonathan Glancey: "In an age in which even the Mini is a big car – have you ever seen one parked next to an original, Issigonis-designed Mini? – and every new car is much faster than anyone ever needs it to be, how many of the world's rapidly growing band of motorists will be all that interested in Ban and Hara's bonsai cars?"

"When it was introduced almost 30 years ago, Right to Buy was hailed as 'one of the most important social revolutions of the century'. But far from seeing council estates transformed by their home-owning former tenants, it has led to fractured communities, the rise of exploitative landlordism and a lack of housing so severe that some councils are now trying to buy their old homes back."

"Starting today, you can tell Google Maps that you want walking directions, and we'll try to find you a route that ... uses pedestrian pathways when we know about them" They failed my Barbican highwalks test, but hopefully the data will come in time.

Mmm, motorways, I love you. (Which is odd, really, as I don't drive, and don't really like cars.)

Looking back at the iMac a decade on. "It will ship with built-in networking (great if this was a built-for-business bMac or a network computer nMac, but a curious inclusion for homes and quite a slab of the educational market)" How things change.

A pean to "dumb boxes", the rectilinear blocks that made up the majority of the modernist cityscape. He's going to love London soon, then, with the few examples there were swept away by cheesegraters and walkie-talkies.

Even the relatively public-transport-friendly SF has rubbish bus signage. I was shocked at how poor it was in St Louis, but I did take a few buses in NY without mishap, so they must vaguely work. Not as good as London's, mind.

So US-centric it hurts. Boggle at "Google Transit may well become the world's best way to run a railroad" (no, the best way to do that is good frequency and reliability) and the fact this is on their car blog, then point out TfL doing this better, sooner.

Boris Johnson uses some seriously wacky maths to guess that conductors would cost £8m a year, and gets uppity when TfL - rightly, if the Guardian's reporting is correct - say that this is a serious underestimate.

A nice video showing the amount of the Velib rental bicycles at each of the stations for a single day in February 2008.

This isn't actually that much about the environmental aspects, not as I read it, but it's a fascinating look at Asustek's factories in Suzhou, amongst other things. (Don't read the comments.)

Nice pictures from NASA's Long Duration Exposure Facility, in orbit for five years from 1984.

More architectural writing on St Pancras, this time from Hugh Pearman. Lots of nice photos and images.

... and about to be demolished. More proof that nobody values 60s architecture (not that it was needed; ask Mondial House or Drapers Gardens, both now lost to London).

This is a US-specific piece on 20th century architecture under threat, but London's seen the loss of plenty over the last year, too. Sigh.

I really hope that british TV doesn't die out, because there's been some great stuff in the past.

Australia and water. I gather there's a drought in Western Australia that's lasted for six years. I suspect that post-oil the country is in for a very tough ride.

I thought if there was one part of London where concrete/brutalism was safe, it was the Barbican. Obviouly not. Sigh. (Regwall, bugmenot works)

So that's what the Kapitzas ended up doing...