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Walking Abandoned London
Flickr member ianvisits took a stroll around London on Christmas morning and witnessed the city without any pedestrians. The result are collection of pretty eerie photos.
Charring Cross Road
Leicester Square
Checkout the rest of the set for some more photos of the abandoned city.
walkit.com named in The Guardian’s 100 top sites for the year ahead
Illustration: Jan Kallwejt
walkit.com joins Flickr, Amazon, Last.fm and Dopplr in being named The Guardian's 100 top sites for the year ahead.
We have some fantastic things lined up for early 2009, so make sure you hear about them first by subscribing to our blog.
What's the link between Play England and the British Hypertension Society?
And the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and the Institute of Highway Incorporated Engineers?
And the BMA Public Health Medicine Committee and the Town & Country Planning Association?
And walkit.com and Cancer Research UK?
Well, this eclectic mix of organisations, plus many many more, have all signed up to the Association of Directors of Public Health's “Take Action on Active Travel” campaign.
It's got some pretty radical objectives:- 10% of transport budgets to be invested in cycling and walking
- A 20mph speed limit to be made the norm in residential areas
- A coherent high quality network of cycle routes that link everyday destinations
- Improved driver training and better enforced traffic laws
- Ambitious official targets to be set for increases in walking and cycling
What's interesting is that it encompasses such a broad range of interests, demonstrating how walking can tackle so many societal issues head on, and at pretty low cost.
They're looking for more organisations to sign up – here's the full 'manifesto'.
What do you make of this initiative? Good that we signed up? Or do you think we should stay clear of this sort of thing?
Pace across Bristol and London
These are slightly hypnotic, if a little tough on the old eyes.
A photo taken every 5 metres as the walker (author? cinematographer? photographer?) crosses London and Bristol. Manchester and Newcastle coming in 2009 apparently.
Amazing how green our cities are.
As the author says:“If the British media was to be believed walking across London would be a sure way to get stabbed. On some roads it was like a scene from an apocalyptic film in which everyone had died leaving behind only empty houses and cars – I walked large tracts of London without seeing a soul. Far from feeling afraid I was taken aback by Londoner’s offering free foraged fruit, interest and help. The only thing I had to fight was fabricated suspicions and my own prejudices.”
Video streaming a little patchy.
London (8 minutes, 43 seconds) – see route
Bristol (2 minutes, 55 seconds) – see route
Very Important Pedestrians - VIP day in London
In London on Saturday, the whole length of Oxford Street and Regent Street will be closed to traffic – creating the West End VIP Weekend.
I've been before and recommend it, not least for the slightly surreal experience of witnessing pedestrian mob rule in central London.
The irony is that road congestion is still a problem, because there are so many people in your way! The walkit.com journey times for Oxford Street will be slightly optimistic tomorrow.
The other irony is that commerce has been known to fight pedestrianisation tooth and claw, whereas now it looks as though events such as VIP day are just another weapon in the recession-fighting armoury .
We shall fight the recession in the streets, and we shall fight the recession on foot, and we shall never surrender…
Gordon Brown mandating VIP weekends, every weekend, across the UK's towns and cities? There's an idea.
Road closures in central London
