Friday Reads – 31 August 2018

On By In Friday Reads, Maps

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16 comments

  1. My “availability heuristic” must also mistakenly tell me that taking any form of public transport in Los Angeles, after dark, is likely not preferable to driving my own car, or hiring an Uber. Particularly in that golden hour of ambulatory intoxication following a professional or collegiate football match.

  3. That museification article seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill. A building site is cleared, a market with pseudo-public right of way is turned into a museum that will likely have a real public right of way, a former power station and miles of commercial riverfront is turned into public Thames path? Those are all moves forward in a variety of ways.

  4. Re the museification article, the idea that observation decks featuring on tall buildings is symptomatic of the ‘objectification of London’s built environment’ is not one I agree with. For some of the buildings they will have been put in to help with planning, to give the idea that there is some public benefit to buildings as (subjectively) terrible as 20 Fenchurch Street.

    Also the author should note that such things exist everywhere in cities, and indeed more generally. People like a view, and have done for centuries, it’s probably hard-wired from evolution from wanting to see the predators coming…

  6. I must say, I found the article on museumification a good example of an academic struggle to invent a problem so that the author can pose as a serious contributor. Battersea Power station, the Shard and the various “iconic” but now objectified buildings he complains about, have SFA to do with the disappearance of the “quotidian” “lived” built environment that he also complains about, and never have. Battersea, for example, was designed as and always has been seen as a formal large scale set piece; nothing to do with vernacular architecture or “ordinary” society. Complaints about objectification miss the point entirely – Scott never intended Battersea to be a structure for living.

  7. @Briantist

    That mistake’s been around for at least two years – as seen in the January 2016 version (Version 13), which can be found here.

  8. I agree the museumifcation article is mostly a poor attempt at sophistry. The final paragraph mentioning the squeeze on affordable housing, small business space and nightlife articulates some things to genuinely be concerned about, but the attempt to draw these concerns into a narrative around development, viewing platforms and “objectification of the built environment” is unconvincing.
    Like other major cities, London has iconic buildings and iconic building styles. These have become more prominent since the arrivals of photography, television, air travel and social media. Yes this means the built environment has to be more presentable than it maybe was in the past, but it’s a non sequitur to claim that this must occur at the expense of cultural value.

  9. Good old Diamond G. – the last paragraph in his post has possibly settled whatever nomenclature issues some of us may have had.

  10. Briantist – you appear not to have seen this in DG’s piece: “and most unbelievably the ‘O’ of OSI has been incorrectly translated as Outer”.

    He clearly did see that typo.

  11. Is Waterloo to Blackfriars really a valid OSI?

    How long does the system give you to undertake the walk?

  12. Between the Tube stations it’s about twenty minutes walk. However, if you are allowed to exit from Waterloo East via Southwark station, it is only about seven minutes’ walk to the nearest entrance to Blackfriars, on the South Bank

  13. @Bob

    No Waterloo to Blackfriars isn’t a valid OSI. Southwark to Blackfriars (NR) is and there’s obviously a chain of OSIs. I’m not entirely sure how much you can stack them.

    Charing Cross LU – Charing Cross NR – Embankment – Waterloo NR – Waterloo LU – Waterloo East – Southwark – Blackfriars NR – Blackfriars LU is a pretty epic chain!

  15. @Tim

    Yes. Walk over the Golden Jubilee Bridges, rather than change to the Northern or Bakerloo lines seems reasonably legit as a useful link, even if it isn’t that well used.

    Waterloo East NR is also a valid OSI from Embankment, which is a little more odd as it offers no service you can’t get from the much nearer Charing Cross! Unsurprisingly, it isn’t very well used either, with only 17.5% of the usage the OSI between platforms at West Harrow (that allows you to go back the way you came) gets.

  16. I’ve successfully stacked Waterloo (rail) to Blackfriars (rail) by walking through Waterloo East, down the stairs, and through Southwark station. That made a journey from Kingston to Farringdon cost only £4.

    On the OSI map, Upper Warlingham is incorrectly linked to Whyteleafe South instead of plain Whyteleafe.

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