In short, different places have different problems, and hypermobility may or may not have stopped.

Good day my good friend.

Town Council meetings are not all like Handforth Parish Council. But some of them come pretty close to it. One for another time, certainly. Anyway, here are today’s links just for you.

James

Thank you for being a paid subscriber. Remember to check out this week’s article was on technology roadmaps.

Different places have different parking problems. Who knew?

Parking is an issue that is too often framed as a simple matter of demand and supply. Either demand is too great for the supply, or supply is too great for the demand. To be fair, the likes of Donald Shoup take a more nuanced view, but the point is that it is easy to see parking as an economic or physical problem.

Work by Lang and Yui points to a more intricate perspective that people often take in relation to parking, although the parking issue is still a highly concentrated matter on the whole. Their analysis of parking complaints in Brisbane pointed towards significant variability by area type, noting particularly:

…more problems are reported in areas where land uses are less mixed, land parcels are smaller, and on vacant land or areas with larger green space coverage, especially in industrial areas or areas near transport hubs and junctions.

Could the pandemic have ended hypermobility?

On the face of it, this article by Leandro da Silva Corrêa and Anthony Perl states the obvious – the COVID-19 pandemic spread in well-connected areas and cities were the gateway to the virus spreading. But their hypothesis of the role of hypermobility is interesting. Not because of the question of whether hypermobility helped spread COVID-19 (it did and does), but whether or not it has halted it completely.

The evidence is uncertain. Certainly air travel is still down, which could be a key indicator, but apart from that there isn’t much. But ideas around developing cities for hypermobility, evidence of impact on migration and feelings of alienation, and the digital nomad have been raised. Lots of thoughts, lots of theories, but precious little evidence.

Random things

Or things random.

• To the Horror of His Urban Friends, ‘A Child of the Rainbow’ Returns Home to the Hollows (The Daily Yonder)

• Isaac Asimov Asks, “How Do People Get New Ideas?” (MIT Technology Review)

• Where the Light is Better (The Point)

• The EU’s Global Gateway Is Not a Groundbreaking Plan for Domination in Global Infrastructure (Center for Global Development)

• Family First, State Last: Bureaucratic Nepotism in a Modern State (World Bank Blog)

Interesting things

This map has transport connotations, particularly if you are looking to shift cargo across the border. But I just like it because it looks cool.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Check out this example of a bus service providing grocery deliveries to underserved areas in rural Japan. When serving rural communities, think laterally.