Good day my good friend.

At what stage does one go from being a bit ill and under the weather to being in the wars? Whilst still fighting off a cold, toothache is back again! I think that I last felt well was 3 Prime Ministers and 2 Monarchs ago. Which really isn’t that long ago. So if today’s newsletter is short, you know why.

If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.

James

People-centricity taken to the max (or maybe min)

In an age of individualism, people-centricity in how we design our urban areas make sense. This is not just people-centred design, but how we plan our towns and cities. Some places are taking this one step further. Why have the 20 minute city when you can have the One Minute City? Quite how individualised can we get in planning for future cities? Depends who you ask at consultation events I guess.

New modelling techniques are not just understanding the impacts of these designs at a system level, but also understanding them at a personal level. Including this new research study. Its a bit techy, but the results show how people experience density differently to how we understand density more generally, and therefore what people perceive to be neighbourhoods can differ. Its geeky, a bit strange, bordering on pointless, but I love it.

Running before we can walk, or cycle

After taking a bit of a break (and underspending their budget on cycling by a lot), Transport for London is poised to get cracking on cycle infrastructure improvements by spending £80 million on its Healthy Streets Programme every year until 2024. Cycle advocates will point out that this is just £9 per head across London compared to some areas of the Netherlands that are spending 85 Euros per head. But compared to the rest of the UK and despite the Active Travel Fund, its brilliant.

But maybe this points to a wider issue, bearing in mind the challenges with delivering on active travel infrastructure over the last few years. Its the capability to deliver. Throwing funding at a problem is a recipe for two things: consultants to cream the lot, and for failure. You need to invest in the capability to deliver. And so while funding is low now (but increasing), maybe it just reflects how easy it is for us to deliver change bearing in mind our skills.

Random things

These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope that you enjoy them.

• Firefox points the way to eradicating one of the rudest words online: PDF (The Register)

• ‘Could Do Better’: NZ Gets D Grade For Active Transport To School (Scoop)

• Why Britain cannot build enough of anything (The Economist)

• A political backlash against monetary policy is looming (The Financial Times)

• Soul City: A Black dream killed just as it was coming true (Scalawag)

Something interesting

How do you get water from the river below into the canal above? The Wey and Arun Canal contains the UK’s only surviving Noria. I just love the engineering geekery of this video by Paul Whitewick.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Tom Forth has brought his Parkulator back to life. Check out quite how much of your urban area is taken up by car parking. Where I live is dominated by the car park at Tesco and the railway station.