Genghis Khan in Sydney

Up early this cool Autumn morning. Showered in water hot from yesterday’s sun, savoured the simple animal pleasure of the steam of it on the windows.   Walked about 40 minutes to the centre of the city.  Along the edge of Darling Harbour, beside the water all lovely, asparkle, ashowing off in the clear, gods-given sunny, cloudless day.   Then finally to the top floor of the new renovation of the Museum of Modern Art at Circular Quay, functions only.  Isolated from... Read More

Frasers’ Broadway project to slow city traffic

  New lanes being added and footpath narrowed for new 3,300 car park, Broadway (Apology for pedestrian giving the works the finger in the artwork.) Frasers will slow city traffic with their new project, and we’re looking at more minutes added to the journey for buses and cars going to and from the city.   The 30,000 students at UTS and Sydney Institute  and the 40,000 + students at Sydney uni and the thousands of citizens who walk the pavement will have their... Read More

Youth food cyclists coming to Chippo

On Saturday 15 October the Youth Food Movement cyclists will have a bicycle ride on lunch.  They’ll have a tour of the house here and then of the road gardens. Jessica Mobbs will give the cyclists two short tours of the house, one from 1130 to 1200, the second from 1210 to 1240. The cyclists will pause in Peace Park and make smoothies with a bike. Paul and Bob will show the cyclists the road gardens, including the vertical garden in Pine Street. The cyclists are running... Read More

Rubbish taxi

A client has emailed me about a beaut ‘waste’ business: A friend of mine Paul Younan runs a company called Rubbish Taxi, they come and clean up and remove any rubbish you want removed.  They are stong believers in recycling what other people throw away.  They recycle as much as they can before heading to land fill and at the end of most months sell what can be re-used back to people who believe they can re-use what was thrown out. rubbishtaxi.com… Sounds... Read More

Special series on cities

This week The Australian newspaper carries a series of articles on cities, here: www.theaustralian.com… There’s an interesting one about planning, here: www.theaustralian.com… I’ve written one about the future of roads, here: www.theaustralian.com… Enjoy, Michael  Read More

Gas drilling and fracking

Amidst the gas drilling frenzy across Australia and the limp coverage of it by our media I’ve found this recent blog by one of my favourite energy writers, James Kunstler, and some of it is here: “• The fracking fluid is a secret proprietary cocktail formula amounting to 5 percent of the liquid injected into the earth. It’s composed of: sand; a jelling agent to suspend the sand because water is not “thick” enough; biocides to kill bacteria that... Read More

Inspiring city planning

On ABC  iView for a week or so there’s an inspiring example of city planning at Portland in the US where the city: is reducing city traffic, increasing public transport making the car a guest on many roads cutting transport related pollution and much more. To visit it on the web: ABC iView E2 Transport: Ep5 Portland: A sense of place Enjoy, Michael  Read More