ASH GROVE

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Ash Grove :site plan

Ash Grove is situated up to the Regent Canal. It is a dead end surrounded by blind bricks wall except a door to a private back garden. This space with the involvement of the inhabitants could become an Eden. Where people can meet and exchange ideas about a city without car. With small events and talks organized during the summer.
It is really closed to weekly activities such as Broadway Market or Vyner street gallery opening. So there is also a potential flux of peoples who might join those events.

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Ash Grove :view from the entrance of the cul-de-sac

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Ash Grove :view from the back of the cul-de-sac


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Ash Grove : unfold brick walls

CAR CLUB

The Hackney Car Club Scheme is part of our wider work to increase opportunities for everyone in the borough and make the area safer, cleaner and greener.

So what is a Car Club?

A car club offers you the convenience of being able to use a clean, modern and reliable vehicle for those trips you cannot do by using public transport, cycling or walking.

Car Club cars are commonly parked on-street in their own designated bay. Sessions as short as 30 minutes can be booked by Car Club members by phone or via the internet. Cars are placed in areas where they are easily accessible for residents and businesses and it’s our aim to ensure that there is a Car Club bay within 5 to 10 minutes walk of each household. They provide a convenient alternative to using a privately owned vehicle because Car Club members only pay for what they use and therefore do not have to worry about tax, insurance, parking permits, servicing or repairs. There are none of the hassles of owning and maintaining a car.

Members have access to a car 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with none of the worry and expense of insurance, resident parking permits, garage fees, maintenance and all the other bureaucratic burdens that car owners have to carry.

Why are we doing this scheme?

There are three key reasons why we are developing this scheme in Hackney:

• to relieve parking pressures within the borough;
• to reduce the reliance on the private motor-vehicle by residents and businesses;
• to improve the level of social inclusion experienced by residents who can not afford their own car

How will the Car Club work?

The most efficient way to deliver this scheme in a cost effective way in Hackney is to work with an existing company that has experience of setting up and running Car Clubs in London. Streetcar has been commissioned as Hackney’s Car Club operator.

The Hackney Car Club Scheme is run by Streetcar, the largest car club operator in the United Kingdom. By joining Streetcar you will have access the vehicles located in our borough and the neighbouring boroughs of Islington, Tower Hamlets and City of London. You will also be able to book any of the other Streetcar car club vehicles spread over 700 locations in the UK.

As a member you can book a car online or over the phone as little as 30 minutes ahead of time and use remotely activated smartcards to unlock the vehicle. At the end of the journey you return your car to its dedicated on-street Car Club parking space, so you are always guaranteed a space.

Residents and businesses can become a member for as little as £50 a year with the cars starting from £3.95 per hour, with the first 30 miles of petrol free.

The cars are available 24 hours a day for rent by the hour, day, week or month.

If you would like to see where the closest bay to you will be on a map, it can be downloaded from the link on the right hand side of this page.

About the Car Club Parking Bays

Car Club cars are currently placed in their own on-street parking bays and will continue to operate in this way for all future bays implemented within Hackney.

Only the Car Club vehicle can park in these bays and they will be designated with the wording ‘Car Club Only’ on the road way and will be enforceable by Parking Attendants. The location of these parking bays has been selected so as many people in the borough as possible can have access to a Car Club car. The map of all bays can be downloaded from the link on the right hand side of this page.

Some of the locations are in areas where there is demand for parking. We anticipate that over time, introducing Car Clubs in these areas of parking stress could lead to a reduced demand for parking. We will be monitoring to see whether this happens, working along with the Hackney Car Club Scheme operator, Streetcar.

Hackney Car Club scheme link

Street Car link

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Hackney Car Club bay map

Crash! (1971) Part 1 of 2 - JG Ballard

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Shot for the BBC two years before his notorious novel of the same name was published, the film followed Ballard as he outlined some of the ideas that would later form the basis of the book (itself adapted for the screen by David Cronenberg in 1996).

for more info : De Domenici Blog

The future of our food

www.transitiontownbrixton.org

How many cars?

United States: 800 cars for 1000 inhabitants
European Union: 600 cars for 1000 inhabitants (2006 data)
56% of motorised families have 1 car, 37% have 2 cars, 7% have 3 cars and more.
18% of families in town don’t have a car and less than 10% in countryside.
(source:Mobilités urbaines, Jean-pierre Orfeuil, 2008.)

Since the 90’s we observe a world generalization of individual cars. In China like in India there are 15 cars for 1000 inhabitants but this motorisation rate has grown far more quickly than in other countries between 1990 and 2003 and it will probably grow faster, especially because those countries are the most populated in the world. While Car industry, in developed countries, is at the moment in serious difficulties, China car purchase has been increased by 5%; on million of cars have been sold in March 2009. (Le Courier International, nº964, Avril 2009) This growth is related to the reduction of taxes on car purchase, which is part of the government economic plan.
What can be the consequences if those countries will reach the same amount of car than U.S. or Europe?

AIR BEAR

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Alejandro Aravena public lecture at the LSE 27th April 6.30pm

chilean architect Alejandro Aravena is giving a public lecture at the LSE on the evening of Monday 27th April.
For more informatios see: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/cities

Project Elemental-Alejandro Aravena
http://www.elementalchile.cl/category/vivienda/iquique/

Old Mini Cooper, Vice, Jonnie Craig.

Bikeday-Hackney city farm

The Electric Car is on the crest !

‘The city in 25 years will be public transports and electric cab’ said the visionary Philippe Guédon from Bolloré group.
Can we talk about sustainable innovation for the car industry?

The car has created in the 20th century the conditions of its own depreciation by all the negative effects it has generated:
cities congestion, environment deterioration, mortality by accident…

The car industry has ignored this for a long time but today, car future depends on it capacity of overcoming. Regarding to the rarefaction of petrol and global warming, the car industry needs to be innovative in greener transports.
Between all the possibilities that have been studied, the electric car stands out, but the type of electricity that will be used for those new car generations is questioned. In Germany, Bjorn klusmann, from the federal union of sustainable energy proclaimed that the sustainable energies are able to cover the needs in electricity for the million of vehicles that will be in Germany’s road for 2020. But, at that time, the German industries give priority to the energy coming from nuclear and coal.
How much more energy would we need if automobiles went onto electric grid?

The prime minister Gordon Brown projects a positive vision for the new ‘low carbon’ British economy that will emerge from the recession. He said that the government would provide incentives to help the car industry become a market leader across the world for electric and hybrid cars. The European Investment Bank approved a £340m loan to Jaguar Land Rover to develop ‘green’ vehicles, with a further £373m to be split between Nissan’s plants in Sunderland and Spain. (The Independent, 8 April 2009)

But is Electric cars really a solution for our cities disease?
The flood of automobiles overwhelmed city centres make it unbearable and the solution is certainly not to increase infrastructures as people acquired cars even if those ones are electric! We need to take a new look at the car as individual property in city centre. We need to aimed more at solidarity based mobility; green, shared, public... We’ve ended with the speech of 50’s government about the ‘right’ to drive a car as ‘individual liberty’ whatever ‘the cost of it’.

In the meanwhile, Paris is on the spot!
After the success with ‘Velib’, Paris is now keen to introduced ‘Autolib’ for 2010, which is basically the same kind of free service but with electric cars. The monthly rent subscription will cost 15 to 20€ and 4 to 5 € by each 30mn. (Novethic)
This system, as car sharing, encourages users to rent a car only when they need and don’t have to look after. But it’s also a space profit for everyone, if the charging battery time is quick enough, because the cars will be in constant use, reducing by the way the parking surfaces and allowing public space to re-integrates cities.

London, lag behind?…
The Mayor, Boris Johnson, is studying the ‘Autolib’ system after the opening of a ‘Velib’ in the city for 2010. He also announced the creation of The London Electric vehicle Partnership to support the use of electric car in the city.

To be continued…

*picture: piled up electric car in free service imagined by the research center MIT Media Lab

CROYDOMIA BY Birds Portchmouth Russum architects

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Birds Portchmouth Russum architects (link) - Croydromia - Croydon 1993

Quatre parkings situés à la périphérie de Croydon (Sud de Londres) sont reliés par une nouvelle boucle et un parc "central". Ce dernier coupe le centre ville en deux. Les parkings sont revigorés par l'ajout, sur les toitures, de "dromes" expressifs et colorés qui abritent de nouveaux espaces de loisirs. Les parkings et les connections de l'espace public qui les relient au centre confèrent à ces structures salutaires une qualité civique.

SURPRISE !

LATE SPRING

Spring is definitely here !!
And we are ready after a feeding winter :
let's continue

Autophobia

Autophobia is a treasure house of cultural commentaries and anecdotes about car’s history.
Excerpt:
"In 1913, The Paris Newspaper Le Figaro recounted the legend of the ‘automotive chicken’: farmers, it was said, bred it especially for its ability to dash under the wheels of passing cars, thus enabling its owner to extract five francs in damages from the motorist."

Voiture-cheval, Paris

seattle 2000

SUPERPOSED USES

Georgestown_Kentucky (clic to enlarge)

Annapolis Maryland (clic to enlarge)

Urban taxes: pro or against?

More and more cities in the world begin to reduce the systematic use of car in their centre. The principle of urban tax has been set up 40 years ago by the American economist William Vickney (honoured with a Nobel in 1996) There are 3 types of urban taxes: - The area urban tax like in London where you have to pay to drive in it - The cordon urban tax like in Stockholm where the entrance of an area is rated - The axis urban tax where you have to pay for using an axe or an infrastructure The first cities to apply the area urban tax are Singapore, Oslo, Trondheim, Bergen and London.

‘London congestion charge’

‘If the city of speed is the city of success, as Le Corbusier proclaimed, London is a resounding failure’ Anthony Hoethe, ROAM, 2003.

In London, the ‘Congestion charge’ has been settled since 2002 to fight against congestion, which clog up roads, threatens businesses and damages London’s status as a thriving world city.
This charge is applied from Monday to Friday for the inner city and each way in the area cost 8 pounds. As a result, the traffic has been reduced by 21% and cycling increased by 46%. 123 millions of pounds have been collected with this tax in 2006/2007 and reinvested in public transport.
But this system also has its proper limits. First of all, it’s a really expensive system. In London, the CCTV system which automatically check the vehicle registration number cost 170 millions each year and the global network installation has cost 300 millions of euros. Moreover, the problem of pollution further rejected outside the area is an important question that hasn’t been resolved yet. This kind of tax also questioned the inhabitant’s equality. The rich people of city centre are more able to pay this tax than suburb people. And it’s seems to be not really an ecological issue because it’s supporting in a way the firms to bought a right to pollute in the inner centre. The impacts on the economy for the service sector and small shops in the taxed area is not well know at the moment. According to Marcel Robert (‘Pour en finir avec la société de l’automobile’) public opinion investigations realised in the city concerned by an urban tax shows that people are generally against it before the application but most of them change their point of view several month later.
As an example, an experiment of 6 month in Stockholm for the urban tax has been well accepted by the inhabitants who approved at 53% the permanent settle of this tax. (Novethic)

Carbon emissions taxes
A 'CO2 charge and CO2 discount in the Low Emission Zone' must have been settled in February 2008, decided by the previous mayor of London Ken Livingston. But the new mayor Boris Johnson has cancelled this tax. He arguments that owners of vehicle emitting the highest level of CO2 (226g/km and above), such as large family cars, would have paid 25£ a day to drive in the central London Congestion Charging zone and this scheme would have cost 10m £ to TfL* to implement. But all residents who are registered with TfL for the 90 per cent Residents’ Discount will continue to receive a discount, regardless of their vehicle’s CO2 emissions.
Since 2007, some borough like Islington and Hackney applied the parking permit price, which is reflecting the amount of carbon that vehicles emit. This system that taxes the most polluted cars aimed to encourage people to choose low carbon emissions vehicles.
In France since 2005, an ecological vignette has been settled. The price is increasing by 2 euros by Carbon grams for cars that emit more than 200g and by 4 euros for vehicles under 250g. But this tax is effective only for very polluting vehicle, which represent 8% of cars.
In Germany, 8 communes of Bade-Württemberg have joined Berlin, Köln and Hanover in their fight against small particles. Some ‘ Umweltzonen' (environmental areas) mostly dense and especially concerned by pollution are only accessible by cars which have a green vignette corresponding to minimum carbon emission rates.
But is this kind of tax really aimed to reduce carbon emission or help the car industry to sell new cars?

TfL*: Transport for London

LONDON ORBITAL by IAN SINCLAIR

In a series of daily treks, Sinclair, accompanied by a menagerie of companions, completes the M25 circuit on the eve of the millennium. But "London Orbital" is no guidebook. And with its incessant detours and constant diversions into the socio-political, architectural, or artistic implications of the terrain, it can hardly be called a travel narrative.

So, what is it?

Somewhere around South Mimms, Sinclair himself dubs the journey a fugue, "transient mental illness. Madness as a voyage." Psychological fugue. Characterized by a loss of awareness of self in combination with a flight from one's home. Sinclair revels in his mad fugue. "You didn't walk to forget, you walked to forget the walk." The payoff lay "in the heightened experience of present-tense actuality." In American: Zen and the Art of Walking around London.

Sinclair eschews the automobile out-of-hand. He is admittedly ignorant of a passing car's make or model: "I only do cars by their color." The consummate walker, he regards the drivers on the London Orbital with pity at best:

On the M25, fixed in their lanes, trying to make sense of flashing overhead signs and warnings, smoking, finger-drumming, jumping radio bands, jabbering into cellphones, the motorists are out of time, out of place…Tensed travelers, sweating in their metal pods, discover the insides of the outside. Nerves are stretched. Memories of the miles they've driven, to arrive at this compulsory stasis, melt into exhaust fumes.

Sinclair's own memories are carefully chronicled, detailed, archived. Each image carefully cross-referenced with his vast compendium of exquisitely arcane knowledge - ruminations on British civil engineering, literary references ranging from J.G. Ballard (who he visits on one of his tramps) to William Blake and back again to Michael Moorcock, the historical and architectural minutia of a Victorian-aged mental institution. "London Orbital" is so teeming and seething with Sinclair's breadth of Anglo-data that unless the reader is a longtime inhabitant of London, or at the very least British (or a devoted Anglophile), he can easily become mired in its vastness.

http://www.auto-free.org/

Storeys car-park envelop

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From L'architecture du parking, Simon Henley, ed Parenthèses

ON THE ROAD

On the road explores some of the most significant buildings and engineering structures built in Britain to serve motor vehicles. It focuses on ten key examples -including the Dartford Tunnel, the Humber Bridge and Birmingham's Spaghetti Junction- and examines the ways in which these new forms have changed almost every square mile of the country during the twentieth century. All the chosen project have been specially photographed by architect Alex de Rijke, and are annotated with sketches by engineer Michael Hadi. Other contributors concentrate on how we experience the structures, as well as investigating their cultural context.

(Clic to enlarge) - (picture: Alex de Rijke, drawings: Michael Hadi)

(Clic to enlarge) - (picture: Alex de Rijke, drawings: Michael Hadi)

(Clic to enlarge) - (picture: Alex de Rijke)

‘Traffic in town’

The automobile has been the major tool for our cities' shape since the beginning of the 20th century. But it’s mainly in the 50’s that cities changed to be adapted to the car and it’s infrastructures. Most of government, despite some adverts from professionals and intellectuals, encouraged the use of the car by systematically increasing the infrastructures to follow the rapidly growing fleet of cars. Los Angeles is the perfect example of a city exclusively shaped for cars with it freeways, boulevard and parking lots covering half of the land, where people have to drive a long way to go from a place to another.
In Britain during the 50’s (the second country for cars after U.S.), the transport minister undertakes a study of urban traffic problems. The report ‘Traffic in town’ published in 1963 by Colin Buchanan, a British planner, become quickly famous in the world. ‘His efforts to limit the penetration of the car into cities made him known as one of the most prominent car critics’ advise Brian Ladd (Autophobia).
But Buchanan was not against cars; he was more for reconciliation between cars and city life through careful city planning. He thought that it was necessary to hierarchies the distribution roads in the city, following the ‘Chartres d’Athenes’. He was explaining that the circulation function must be independent than the access function.

Buchanan’s ideas were following the Modernists as Le Corbusier with his research on urban dynamism linked with automobile dynamism;' the architectural shape generated by infrastructure'. In reaction to the over functionalism of the ‘Chartres d’Athenes’, The Smithson (Team X) works more on conciliation between infrastructure and neighbourhood scales. They called it ‘Cluster cities’. Their schemes on urban slab were the prototypes of the Barbican in London or La Defense in Paris.(Clic to enlarge)

A & P Smithson, Cluster City, 1957
A & P Smithson, Grid CIAM 10, 1956."Hand sketch explaining the houses repartition in a Yorkshire's village

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A & P Smithson, Haupstadt Berlin, 1957. "Bird eyes view" (drawing by P.Sigmond)

But quickly, those ideas were badly reused and interpreted by governments. As David Mangin says ‘ the urbanism of sectors has quickly replaced the urbanism of guidelines. The mobility as a winner on physical geography.’
The urban roads have mutated and the street has been dissolved.

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Argenteuil (95, France) Val d'Argent Nord , Urban slab surrounding by 8000 flats. built from 1965 to 1976. Is a the moment under a regeneration scheme.

LIGHT LANE

Yet, only a small fraction of streets have dedicated bike lanes, and with an installation cost of $5,000 to $50,000 per mile, we shouldn’t expect to find them everywhere anytime soon. Instead of adapting cycling to established bike lanes, the bike lane should adapt to the cyclists. This is the idea behind the LightLane. Our system projects a crisply defined virtual bike lane onto pavement, using a laser, providing the driver with a familiar boundary to avoid. With a wider margin of safety, bikers will regain their confidence to ride at night, making the bike a more viable commuting alternative.

SHARE it !

The beginning…
In a speech in the 60’s, the Soviet Nikita Khrushchev proposed a socialist motorisation; a form of collective owned vehicle in order to fulfil practical needs without becoming an object of conspicuous consumption. But without success…
In the Meanwhile, Car sharing or ‘ Carpool’ has been developed in the United States during the petrol crisis in the 70’s. The lack of public transport and the high cost of petrol have encouraged this practice especially for home/work travels and between people of the same company. 2 or 3 peoples were sharing their car with each other’s. Each week the cars were swaping in order to have no exchange of money.
But this practice has progressively disappeared especially during the 90’s; the years of individualism development.

Car sharing is coming back!
The awareness of global warning, city sprawling effects, health problems due to pollutions, death by accidents, city congestion, public space disappearance … encourage the development of new transport modalities.
The car sharing is today well spread, helped by the development of new technologies of information and telecommunication. A lot of people have now access to Internet. Car sharing websites are manage by local communities, students associations, or firms interested by their employees’ mobility, …
But this practice is not only interesting for private people; it does also participate to the reduction of roads congestion and car park sprawling. Jean Pierre Orfeuil explained the eventuality of a financial advantage by the firm for the employees who don’t use a car park as the Californian example from the 70’s where the employees' wage was increased if they didn’t need to park a car.
Car sharing is a good vector of sociability and promotes communities’ exchange and solidarity.
But sharing a car is not only a practice between car’s owners; it can also be an exchange via a firm that provide cars for users. This practice is interesting to reduce production of cars and pollutions and to question the property.
Loic Mignotte is the founder of ‘Caisse-commune’, which exist in Paris since 1999 and propose attractive rates. This firm presents itself as an alternative of individual vehicle and a complement for the use of public transport or taxi: ‘We are part of a multi modal process according to uses. We aim to develop ecological behaviour with economy. Because the user is paying for using, he is encouraged to think about his consumption.’ The city mayor is also encouraging commercial agents of municipal car park to be involved in the development of those ‘car-sharing’ stations with interesting prices. (Novethic)
This process is also taking part of the optimisation of car park space because a car is in constant use between different people. ‘Caisse-Commune’ estimates 20 users for one car!

Well done!

“ I’m going to democratize the automobile (…) When I’m trough, everybody will be able to afford one, and about everybody will have one.” Henry Ford

All Mod Cons

BLESS n°35 AUTOMATICA, 2008, leather, foam.
Somerset House exhibition 'WOULDN'T IT BE NICE...' December 2008

LOL

GLASGOW:cut by the motorway (to be develop)

Running on empty

Excerpt from The Guardian (28.01.09) by Jonathan Glancey
While it’s hard to imagine the president’s security advisers recommending a Smart car instead of Cadillac One, it would be interesting to see a read-out of Obama’s carbon footprint over the next four years as his fellows Americans replace their V8 pick-ups and SUVs (sport utility vehicle) with cars designed to use half or even tree times less gas than these politically doomed design.
The ownership of car has been a symbol of American freedom since Henry Ford launched his Model-T, or “Tin-Lizzie’, in 1908.
The cars, especially the V8-powered one, big and rumbling, have long been celebrated in film and song.
Bruce Springsteen:
“I got a 69 Chevy with a three ninety-six, Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor, She’s waiting tonight down in the parking lot, Outside the seven-Eleven store… Tonight, tonight the strip’s just right, I wanna blow’en off in my first heat, Summer’s here and the time is right, We’re goin’racin’in the street”
The idea of Chuck Berry idly riding along in his automobile “Cruisin’ and playing the radio/With no particular place to go” will be soon anathema.
How a culture and a country whose very infrastructure and way of life has turned for so long with the wheels of mammoth automobiles is going to make do with “environmentally friendly” cars that could fit inside the trunk of Elvis’s or Obama’s Cadillac.

DRIVE-IN MOVIE

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Drive-in movie theatre, Los Angeles, 1945

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Drive-in movie theatre, Copenhagen, 1961

There are something like 550 cars parked here on the opening night of Scandinavia's first drive-in movie theatre.

Curtain G-Park

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Carpark installation-july 2008

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Contrebande de mobilités par Gael Augustin

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Contrebande de mobilités par Gael Augustin
(follow the link)

Dans le cadre de l’option de projet « Utopies ferroviaires 2008 »
Fabienne Mareschal, Elisabeth Pasquier et Pascal Amphoux
Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'architecture de Nantes

L’aéroport Notre Dame des Landes s’annonce comme l’un des plus gros chantiers du grand Ouest pour l’horizon 2012. Ce projet implique la connexion de l’aéroport à l’agglomération nantaise par l’intermédiaire d’une ligne de Tram-Train.

Une première partie de la ligne est commune avec la future ligne Nantes-Châteaubriant (effective en 2009) et une seconde intégralement nouvelle reprend le tracé historique de l’ancienne voie Bordeaux-St Malo (effective en 2012). Cette nouvelle ligne devrait desservir les gares successives de Nantes-Gare, Haluchère, Babinière, Erdre-Active, Treillières et Vigneux de Bretagne. Une traversée partant d’un contexte urbain dense jusqu’aux paysages ruraux de la communauté de communes d’Erdre et Gesvres.

Dans le cadre de l’option de projet « Utopies ferroviaires 2008 », nous avons, à travers les différentes gares, réinterroger des territoires plus larges présentant des conditions hétérogènes. Repenser le point d’arrêt comme le départ d’une réflexion articulant différentes échelles du territoire et comme prétexte à l’expérimentation. La ligne de tram-train comme potentiel à réinventer de nouveaux usages, de nouvelles stratégies.

Europe as a playground: closer and closer

European Train Network Evolution 1990-2000-2010 (clic to enlarge)

Source : ROAM (Reader On the Aesthetics of Mobility)

Spatio-temporal map of Europe (clic to enlarge)
Source : ROAM (Reader On the Aesthetics of Mobility)

This map indicates the relative positions of various European cities. Unlike a conventional map which charts distance, such a map indicates the relative location according to travel time. With the development of the European high speed rail network (speeds in excess of 300 km/h) the city of London will in the future, for example, gravitate by "moving closer" (in terms of travel time) to the dense region of Nothern Europe; The Randstad, Flanders and the Ruhrgebeit pulling the UK apart as this projection shows.

1963 PEEL 50

London's governance overview

LONDON’S GOVERNMENT OPERATES WITHIN A RELATIVELY CENTRALISED, UNITARY STATE.
SEVERAL CENTRAL DEPARTEMENTS HAVE RESPONSIBILITIES WITHIN THE CITY, INCLUDING HEALTH PROVISION, THE REGULATION OF COMMUTER RAILWAYS AND A FINAL ARBITER FOR MAJOR PLANING DISPUTES.
CENTRAL GOVERNMENT ALSO HAS A NUMBER OF REGULATORY POWERS OVER THE MAYOR AND THE CITY’S BOROUGHS.
THE MAYOR OF LONDON IS THE ELECTED EXECUTIVE FOR A NUMBER OF MAJOR CITY-CITYWIDE SERVICES, NOTABLY PUBLIC TRANSPORT AND SPATIAL PLANING. THE MAYOR IS OVERSEEN BY AN ELECTED, NON-LEGISLATIVE, ASSEMBLY.
THERE ARE ALSO 32 ELECTED BOROUGH COUNCILS WHOSE RESPONSABILITIES INCLUDE SCHOOLS, SOCIAL CARE, THE ENVIRONNMENT, LOCAL TRANSPORT AND LOCAL PLANING; THE CITY OF LONDON, THE UK CAPITAL’S FINANCIAL AND BUSINESS HUB, HAS THE POWERS OF A BOROUGH BUT ALSO SEVERAL ADDITIONAL RESPONSIBILIIES.

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LONDON’S TRANSPORT AUTHORITY:
- The Greater London Authority (GLA):
The Greater London Authority consists of four ’functional bodies’ and a core administration at City Hall. Transport for London (TfL) is the largest of these functional bodies, with a turnover of £6 billion in 2006-07.
The Mayor of London sets its budget and chairs the TfL board, which he also appoints.

-Transport for London (TfL):
TfL is one of the most powerful local transport organisations in the world, with responsibility for London’s Underground, buses, major roads, river services and taxi & minicab regulation.
TfL, in common with the other GLA functional bodies, is a local authority and thus subject to much of the general legislation affecting such institutions. Its turnover is funded from fares (user charges) and government grants, with broadly half of its income coming from each source.
TfL’s predecessor organisations (such as London Regional Transport, the Highways Agency and the Public Carriage Office) did not borrow for capital purposes. Their capital expenditure was funded by government grant. As a result, TfL started its life debt-free. In advance of TfL taking control of London Underground, the government signed a controversial 30-year public-private partnership (PPP) deal to refurbish and renew the Tube. The service charge on the PPP contracts costs about £1.1 billion per year, funded by Treasury grant.

Source: The endless city-Urban Edge

NL architects
La Biennale di Venezia 2008

As many cars as people !!!

Nantucket Beach, July 4,1925
This is the famous Massachusetts resortin the days before parking restrictions, and at this date, such a scene could really be found only in the US; the carhad taken off likes hot cakes


(from the car, a history of the automobile by Jonathan Glancey)

CUSTOM BICYCLES IN JAPAN

London Lite, 07/11/2008