#london (404 links)
- Scrap Metals, Pubs and Shops in Allen Road, Stoke Newington - A London Inheritance alondoninheritance.com
- Aphex Twin, a Brixton squat and a load of wet mattresses: revisiting Telepathic Fish, the heart of the 90s chillout boom theguardian.com
Before it became naff music for health spas, chillout was cool – and this London club night was key. As a new generation carry its spirit forward, the originators remember the beats and bedding
- A new kind of gentrification is spreading through London – and emptying out schools | Anna Minton | The Guardian theguardian.com
The positive rhetoric and branding of placemaking is that it transforms run-down areas into vibrant and economically successful parts of the city. The reality is that it creates sterile places, emptied of so many of the essential aspects of urban life, except the expensive activities. The city may be emptier than ever of children and families, but tables at sought-after restaurants are still booked up weeks in advance.
- The Infatuation theinfatuation.com
- BT Tower to become hotel as London landmark sold for £275m theguardian.com
- TfL's AI Tube Station experiment is amazing and slightly terrifying takes.jamesomalley.co.uk
Nicholas Saunders was a counterculture pioneer with an endless stream of quixotic schemes and a yearning to spread knowledge – but his true legacy is a total remaking of the way Britain eats.
The depressing reality of what has happened here becomes all the more stark when you look across the river. Right opposite the power station stands Churchill Gardens, a vast postwar housing estate designed by distinguished architects Powell and Moya, built to house 5,000 people across a 12-hectare site, with several blocks now listed and around half still council-owned. Built by Westminster City Council, it was designed to accommodate a balanced cross-section of society, with the highest standards of housing for all – and not a segregated entrance in sight.
Designed with and for children under the age of 14, the space aims to inspire the next generation of artists, designers, performers and practitioners.
- The crass, ad-laden reinvention of central London theguardian.com
Outernet boasts of being “the world’s foremost bridge between the real world and the digital world”, a place where the metaverse meets meatspace, where virtual luxury trainers can be sold as NFTs alongside the real thing. There are plans for it to grow into a worldwide network of 10 connected hubs, with New York and Los Angeles next on the list. But it shows what happens when urban development is conceived in the same way as making a website or running a TV channel – “curating a brand neighbourhood,” as O’Ferrall puts it. Pings, clicks and content trump human experience, until advertising swallows the city whole.
- Crossrail: A Hole New World - London Reconnections londonreconnections.com
It is the principle that bad news tends to accrue at a lower management level, because no one wants to be the person who moves a project risk marker from ‘yellow’ to ‘red’ on a RAG chart. As a result, pessimism and a belief that the project will overrun ‘bubbles up’ to a certain decision-making level but never beyond, as if hitting the thermal layer that exists in the ocean. Eventually, the issues reach critical mass and force their way through, leaving senior management wonder why everything ‘suddenly’ went wrong, when in fact the signs that the project was troubled existed at a lower level for some time.
- Russell Davies: City Snacks russelldavies.typepad.com
<blockquote>Mostly though I just remember sitting here, writing optimistic notes about work that mattered, for stuff that had a chance of actually happening. That's proven to be rare in the world of 'digital transformation'.</blockquote>
Amen.
- Kent walks near London localkentwalks.com
- Welcome To The New Age Disco: The Untold Story of London Techno, 1989-1997 daily.redbullmusicacademy.com
<blockquote> I remember when a friend of mine moved to Paris in the 90s to pursue his dream of becoming an artist. He came back to England, disillusioned, five years later, calling the city "a museum" – mummified, stagnant, a victim of its own past glories, bought up by rich outsiders who'd out-priced the creative vibe that drew them there in the first place. The locals, wistful and resigned, referred to their city as "The Sleeping Beauty", looking on enviously at how London was ablaze with the best art, the best music, the best nightlife, the best creativity of any stripe, while they were left with only fine wine and memories, as Uncle Monty might have put it. Is London headed the same way as The Sleeping Beauty – an exquisite corpse, too dolled up and expensive for the creativity it's still trading on to flourish, or even survive? </blockquote>
And dads, obviously.
- TaxiVan.net taxivan.net
- The Office Club jointheofficeclub.com
<blockquote> The Office Club facilitates hot desking for workers who cannot commit to being in the office all week. Just let us know when you need a desk and we’ll allocate one of our hot desks to you on a day-by-day basis.</blockquote>
- 10 top freelance friendly working spaces kindredhq.com
- Green Workforce greenworkforce.co.uk
<blockquote>London handyman services. Professional property maintenance & handyman service at home or work.</blockquote>
- Totally Failing London | the cabbies capital thecabbiescapital.wordpress.com
- 50 Things To Do In London Before You’re 5 notanothermummyblog.com
- Nopudding London nopudding.com
<blockquote>A map-based guide to vegan, vegan-friendly, and vegetarian places to eat in London. Works great on mobile devices. Includes reviews, descriptions, and food hygiene ratings.</blockquote>
- London’s Great Exodus nytimes.com
<blockquote>The property market is no longer about people making a long-term investment in owning their shelter, but a place for the world’s richest people to park their money at an annualized rate of return of around 10 percent. It has made my adopted hometown a no-go area for increasing numbers of the middle class.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Gentrification has adopted an exaggerated and accelerated form in the capital, hurting communities from Brixton to Belgravia.</blockquote>
- CoWorkingLondon.com coworkinglondon.com
- Talks in London, Lectures in London - Talks & Lectures talksandlectures.com
Really quite good.
- Interesting Talks in London interestingtalks.in
- Upcoming lectures (London) lecturelist.org
- Highbury and Newington Green, then and now – Time Out London now-here-this.timeout.com
<blockquote>With some archival photography, a good eye for a camera angle and some solid Photoshopping, Redditor Drewsta1987 created these excellent then-and-now images of the Highbury and Newington Green area.</blockquote>
- FutureGov | Helping to shape the future of government wearefuturegov.com
- Another Studio postcarden.com
Architectural models of London (and other) landmarks.
- John Lanchester rides the London Underground guardian.co.uk
- The Shard: beacon of the left's skyline guardian.co.uk
- Heygate Community Betrayal [page 1] london-se1.co.uk
- The Green London Way greenlondonway.com
- London ‘Least Car-Dependent City’ londonist.com
- New Statesman - The tax haven in the heart of Britain newstatesman.com
One of the biggest, most silent players behind so much offshore activity has been identified: a Teflon-like, medieval institution, wrapped around the neck of Britain and dedicated to keeping finance strong and free.
- BBC News - How to read London bbc.co.uk
What you need to navigate around [London] is not just a map but a map with the dimension of time attached
- diamond geezer diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk
"It's been spun as "transforming the surrounding area into a vibrant new metropolitan quarter", whereas in reality it's just an aerial sideshow to lure tourists somewhere new. The engineering's an impressive achievement, to be sure, and you'll probably come once for a ride and help make it an overnight success. But Boris's unholy alliance of public money and corporate branding is more about making a statement than fulfilling a need, and hangs uncomfortably across East London's skyline."