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Too macho to use walkit.com?
We were amused to catch someone say on Twitter recently: “My girlfriend swears by this www.walkit.com – such a girl thing”.
Our survey results suggest more women than men use walkit.com (though we've also been told that this may just be because more women fill in online surveys – anyone got the evidence for that?).
So let's air some theories for this gender bias:- The hunter-gatherer theory: Men are genetically more predisposed to unaided self-navigation as they were the ones chasing game across the African savannah, while the women stayed immobile, darning gazelle hides round the camp fire.
- The 'calorie counting is for girls' theory: The route calorie count we display appeals more to diet-conscious women; men are naturally more lithe and fit and don't need to worry about such trivial things.
- The 'I can just ask someone' theory: Women prefer to know where they're going in advance, while men just head out, and should they get lost, are more than happy to ask a stranger for directions.
- The boys and toys theory: Men are more likely to navigate using a graphite-lithium ionizing multi-USB port side-winding GPS device that also allows you to email, tweet and watch real-time footie results all at the same time.
- The Jeremy Clarkson theory: walkit.com just needs to be more like Top Gear.
The Yoke Shopper - what walkers have been waiting for?
We've been contacted by these guys, telling us that this is what walkers have been waiting for:
An alternative to the shopping trolley, maybe? (though unlikely to whip up quite such a debate!)
Newcastle beats southern rivals to title of UK’s most sustainable city
Newcastle has beaten cities with a greener reputation to claim the top spot in the 2009 league table of Britain’s most sustainable cities, released by sustainable development organisation Forum for the Future.
It pushes previous winners Bristol and Brighton into second and third place, with good performance in all areas. Newcastle tops the environmental table, and comes fourth for both quality of life and future-proofing.
The Forum’s third annual Sustainable Cities Index tracks progress on sustainability in Britain’s 20 largest cities, ranking them on environmental performance, quality of life and future-proofing, which looks at issues like how well cities are addressing climate change and how dynamic their economy is.
Full report [PDF]
Overall city rankings
2009 rank (2008) [2007]
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1 (4) [8] Newcastle
2 (1) [3] Bristol
3 (2) [1] Brighton and Hove
4 (8) [14] Leicester
5 (9) [10] London
6 (13) [5] Leeds
7 (6) [2] Edinburgh
8 (10=) [11] Nottingham
9 (7) [7] Sheffield
10 (5) [6] Cardiff
11 (14) [17] Coventry
12 (3) [4] Plymouth
13 (12) [13] Sunderland
14 (15) [12] Manchester
15 (17) [20] Liverpool
16 (10=) [9] Bradford
17 (19) [19] Birmingham
18 (16) [16] Wolverhampton
19 (18) [15] Glasgow
20 (20) [18] Hull
Apologies for the temporary service interruption today (Monday November 16)
Many apologies to those of you who may have encountered some problems generating a route earlier today.
We hope you're now finding everything running smoothly.
As always, we value all those vigilant users who provide us with constructive criticism.
Please keep on sending in the feedback, and apologies once again.
The walkit.com team.
The grandaddy of car-free developments?
Let me take you on a little journey.
Maybe not the most prepossessing piece of urban architecture you'll have ever seen…
but as you pass through the first entrance…
you come out into a courtyard…
pass through another passage…
into a further courtyard…
through a further passage…
into the final courtyard…
before you finally leave the development…
and pop out the other side (looking back)
So far, so what?
Architecturally speaking, nothing that special.
But there's something missing isn't there? A residential development without a car in sight! And one built to deliberately exclude them from the main public areas. It's pretty extraordinary.
And what makes this even more remarkable is this:
Look at the date – 1982.
At the height of the 'great car economy', when climate change was on no-one's radar, and when talk of 'car-free developments' was probably limited to cursory (and probably condescending) discussion of 'funny practices on the continent', here was a Scottish Housing Association quietly building a development which turned convention completely on its head.
What's perplexing is that a quick Google of “Jamaica Mews” turns up almost nothing. There seems to be no discussion, even just in passing, of this development by academics, architects or advocacy groups. The modern car-free movement cites communities such as Freiburg's Vauban (5,000 people) and Slateford Green (also, as it happens, in Edinburgh), but Jamaica Mews doesn't seem to get a look-in.
I have no idea what those living in Jamaica Mews think of their development – maybe there are problems a non-resident wouldn't know about. Certainly the pedestrian entrances to the development are pretty mean and uninviting, and given that it's situated in the heart of Edinburgh's New Town (a World Heritage Site), the architecture's hardly prize-winning stuff.
But nearly thirty years later it seems remarkable that so few developments in UK cities, where access to public transport and 'walkability' can be so good, have adopted this model – particularly when you remember that 25% of GB households (43% in London and 31% in other built-up metropolitan areas) have no access to a car anyway.
You don't have to be anti-car to lament the fact that so many of our planners, architects, developers and politicians have failed to provide us with high-quality urban housing focused around people space, rather than car space. Developments where you don't have (or aspire to have) a car, because you don't need or want one.
It looks like Jamaica Mews, in its own quiet (maybe too quiet) way has been showing the art of the possible in car-free developments since 1982.
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Here's a route that takes you through Jamaica Mews.
And my Googling has unearthed a self-catering apartment in the Mews, the City Bothy – 'a relaxing bolthole at the centre of Scotland's capital'.
Aylesbury and High Wycombe go live!
We've added Aylesbury and High Wycombe to our suite of towns and cities.
Here are some routes:
Aylesbury
Aylesbury Station to Buckinghamshire County Museum
Aylesbury Station to Aylesbury Grammar School
High Wycombe
High Wycombe Station to Wycombe General Hospital
Hazlemere to High Wycombe Station
Please get in touch with any feedback.
Boris enters the X Factor...
[Update Dec 3: BBC now reporting that both John Lewis and Westminster Council want to see a dramatic decrease (c.40%) in the number of buses on Oxford Street - TfL aiming for 20% fewer by end of 2010]
… into London's Oxford Street at least.
No, we've not got the great blond mop-head wailing 'Baby hit me one more time' on ITV of an evening (more's the pity), but today he did open a new diagonal pedestrian crossing at Oxford Circus.
And just look at it:
Hats off to TfL and their partners for making this happen.
It's remarkable to see the pedestrian get the upper hand at a junction that has been little short of hostile to walkers up until now.
But (you could probably sense the 'but' coming…) why has it taken until 2009 to make it happen? Pedestrians have been treated scandalously at Oxford Circus for decades – crammed into narrow guardrail-lined spaces hopelessly ill-suited to the great mass of shoppers descending on the area every day.
And the scandal continues.
Oxford Street remains a noisy and inhospitable environment, reeking of diesel fumes and clogged with nose-to-tail queues of buses.
Improvements have happened – wider pavements, better street furniture – but in a list of premier shopping streets in European cities, Oxford Street must languish near, or at, the bottom of 'great places to be'.
London's transport, planning, commercial and political leaders continue to show a lack of vision for the area – a truly radical transformation that sees the introduction of trees, sculpture, performance, fountains (why not?!)… Things to delight you – there is nothing remotely delightful, friendly or inspiring about Oxford Street.
It needn't be full pedestrianisation, but it's got to involve a major rethink of the buses – currently they are part of the problem, not the solution.
Yes, it will be difficult. Changing bus routes and timetabling will be fiendish. And you've got to ensure that the removal or restriction of traffic from one area doesn't cause gridlock in another.
But considering we've put men on the moon and split the atom you'd hope this wasn't beyond us.
So Boris, cut the “this project is a triumph for British engineering” hyperbole. It's a bleedin' diagonal pedestrian junction. And there are already 1000s of them around the world.
It's certainly an improvement, and it's great to see it happen, but there's a hell of a lot more to do.
