Planning for cycling in London and Moscow
London has much to learn about planning for cycling from other cities. But London does not, I suggest, have much to learn from Moscow. Nor do I think many landscape architects were involved with planning the cycle path, unless they were …
Thames Tideway Tunnel London: a landscape architect’s view
Like all Londoners, I expect to have to pay £80/year for the rest of my life for the Thames Tideway Tunnel. The ‘supersewer’ will run under the north shore of the river in Central London. Is this a good deal for Londoners? No. …
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London’s Green Infrastructure Plan for 2050
The London Branch of the UK Landscape Institute made these London_2050_green_infrastructure_2014_landscape_comment.pdf recommendations: SUMMARY of LI London Branch Recommendations 1. Make it clear that the principles of green infrastructure planning apply to the whole of London, not only to vegetated ‘greenspace’. …
Simon Jenkins on London’s skyline landscape and architecture
Simon Jenkis argues that ‘London today has the only skyline in the western world that is unzoned and unplanned. I once asked Johnson’s deputy mayor for planning (yes, there is one), Sir Edward Lister, how many towers he thought appropriate …
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Garden streets in London
Garden streets are a very special type of green street. They are effectively traffic calmed by local residents extending their gardening activities into the public realm. Such initiatives tend to come from individual activist gardeners who show what can be …
Landscape architecture, Ian McHarg and green environmental ethics
Ian McHarg included a chapter ‘On Values’ in Design with nature. It sets out his views on the beliefs and historical ideas which guided his approach to landscape architecture. His discussion is short and unsatisfactory, but many important issues are …
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The landscape architecture of tall buildings in London
When the Walkie Talkie (20 Fenchurch Street) was nearing completion it attracted publicity for its capacity to fry eggs on the pavement. Rafael Viñoly’s great facade behaved like a solar mirror, as shown in the below video. The sun shade …
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London needs an integrated network of green streets
Streets are said to be green when they are dominated by vegetation and/or when they are green in the environmental sense (as in ‘green politics’). London’s Regent Street has never had tree planting but was designed, by John Nash, as …
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Greenwich Peninsula skyline landscape architecture London
This witty and perceptive cutting is from the Friends of Greenwich Park Newsletter (No. 70 Summer 2015). The underlying problem is that neither the newly-Royal Borough of Greenwich nor the Greater London Authority has anything which a serious commentator would …
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