CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
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Glasgow City Council has launched a major visionary ‘Future Glasgow’ initiative which will explore the prospects for the city over the next 50 years and look at the quality of life residents, workers and visitors might enjoy.
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Maybe Edinburgh needs one.
solar-powered trams?
But yes, I think Edinburgh could do with one, but it should be more than just an exercise in burning the marketing, PR and consultancy budgets!
Given the average rainfall in Glasgow, maybe hydro powered trams would be wiser.
So, lets get this straight. Glasgow City Council don't think the following are enough?
Structure Plan
City Local Plan
Sevice Plan
Local housing stragey
Tourism strategy
Metropolitan vision
Transport strategy
Climate change strategy
Employment strategy
I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea. If there is one thing local authorities do not lack it is long term plans and strategies. Given the current financial climate I think the cash would be better spent on something of practical benefit.
"If there is one thing local authorities do not lack it is long term plans and strategies."
Very true.
In many ways that is perhaps part of the problem. Too many plans - often statutory obligations. Sometimes in conflict with other ones - economic development v 'environmental improvement'. The 'trick' to avoid such conflicts by seeing a 'bigger picture'.
Of course whether a '50 year vision' can be of any value is very much an open question!
It may well be yet another fancy document that well meaning time and effort and goodwill had gone into with almost no benefit.
Anyone remember the Lord Provost's Commission on Sustainable Development for the City of Edinburgh?
Masses amount of worthy work fairly quickly ignored.
It would be nice to think that there could be something that 'a city' - i.e. the people likely to live/work in it in the future - could sign up to.
Nice if it could be more than a wish list of platitudes or fantasies - 50 years ago some people seriously believed that future transport would involve a lot of individual jetpacks!
But...
Back to the Future II promised us hoverboards by 2015!!!!
The future vision in the 70s was robots doing all the work and we could all retire at 30 or sumat.
And electricity would be so cheap it wouldn't be worth putting light switches in new buildings.
That is another problem of 50 year visions - the predicted future never happens.
Or is it that 'we' as consumers like the ideas and politicians (etc.) try to deliver them.
Perhaps people have got to the stage where they don't actually want two cars in the drive of their detached house and wish politicians would stop 'promising' them. Perhaps.
But what to wish for - end to war and poverty? Sure.
No more motor vehicles? Well...
A highly educated workforce to compete with the rest of the world? But of course, but.
Better maintenance of what we have? Not aspirational enough!
I was thinking about the future and what was to be the future and what is no longer the future and what is now the future when I stopped on the hill near Dounraey to take a photo of the nuclear complex (now being decommissioned) with a field of wind turbines in the distance.
Regardless of opinions about nuclear power, the golf-ball is a cool piece of design. Shame it will no longer be kept as a monument.
People were also concerned when the replacement phased-array pyramid was installed at Fylingdales to replace the radomes, fearing that tourist buses heading to Whitby would lose one of the sights along the way.
The route to/from parents I drive last week goes past three enormous coal-fired cooling-tower-equipped power stations in quick succession. Whilst they'd be interesting landmarks if preserved, they also look quite nice whilst crumpling when being demolished.
I wish people would join up their long-term plans and strategies with short-term small-scale actual achievables more often. The staff-chivvying initiatives at work are a combination of too-much-in-too-short-a-timescale(considering people have their actual job to do alongside the extra stuff) or a 'routemap' consisting of an over-ambitious endpoint.
Most people long ago gave up pointing and staring at aeroplanes, but not helicopters. Or hovercraft.
Back to the Future II promised us hoverboards by 2015!!!!
I'm working on it, patience!
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