Damn. It's been an entire week sans blogpost. Longer than I'd hoped to go without comment, but in the heady whirl that is disentanglement from one workplace and the gentle process of 'ramping up' (as wanky execs might say) with the next, I've neglected these words and pictures.
Yesterday I was in Paris for a day - 3am get up and a 9pm return, but just about do-able at a push. Bloody freezing it was too, but lovely nonetheless to visit the scene of many youthful crimes committed by me and the other university friends I was there with.
Every time I go there I forget that bit more: I had to catch a cab from the Gare du Nord to Opera, for instance, whereas I'd have enjoyed the familiar walk a few years back. Even from the cab the streets looked different, and emerged from each other at angles I wasn't expecting. So much for the logic of Hausmann's town planning, thought I, despite the resultant elegance.
But what a vision that guy must have had. Having spent the last year working on my Dubai client, whose passions for creating radical new islands and cities are world-(in)famous (see above pictures of the building of Palm Jebel Ali and the rebuildng of Paris), I've witnessed at first hand the effort that goes into restructuring communities.
Admittedly, my client has famously had GPS guided assistance in their endeavours, but the aim of both Hausmann and HH Sheikh Mohammed was similar: to re-create a city so that it's fit for the time that it has to serve - with all the attendant infra-structural challenges.
Is it time for London to be radically restructured?
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