Bike Culture Around the World

Bike sharing in Stockholm, Sweden. One of many wonderful bike rental services I used over the course of the summer.



Bike b keep cyclists safe on the roads of Portsmouth, England (and now Portland Oregon).
Zillions of bikes in Holland.

The Eden Project

Amazing

Summer Reading List

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler

End Game volume 1 by Derrick Jensen

The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

End Game volume 2 by Derrick Jensen

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

No Logo by Naomi Klein

Lots of blogs and news websites

Lots of travel guides

New Urbanism: Poundbury, England

On our way back from the Eden Project and Stone Henge, my friend James and I drove through Poundbury, which is the new urbanist community spearheaded by Prince Charles. Maybe I'm not being totally fair because it's still not completely finished and lived in, but it seemed out of place, and overall I was really unimpressed.

Although more care was put into these houses designs than conventional modern housing, the homogeneity of style made the whole community seem stale and artificial, despite the intent to make the place feel like a pleasant place to live and work.


Interesting quotes from Prince Charles:

"It would seem, however, that the emergent climate-change agenda seems to have offered licence to another generation of architects and designers bent on further divorcing us - through random and untested building shapes and types - from our deeply-rooted connection with Nature's ordering systems which remain true to the rule of climate and season."

"Why, I must ask, does being 'green' mean building with glass and steel and concrete and then adding wind turbines, solar panels, water heaters, glass atria - all the paraphernalia of a new "green building industry" - to offset buildings that are inefficient in the first place?"

"That many of these add-ons are mere gestures, at best, is now clear, as their impacts on home energy consumption can now be measured and usually offer scant justification for the radical nature of the design."

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/prince-charles-on-green-architecture.php

Its good to hear that Prince Charles has a good knowledge and good viewpoints on so called "green" architecture and the current state of greenwashing in the building secter. However, I was unimpressed by Poundbury's sustainability initiatives, which as far as I can tell amounted to good modern windows, good insulation and reasonably efficient appliances. Plopping a town down ontop of an old field could be related to erecting a solar array on top of an office building.