RIP Gin

It was with sadness that my American friend K announced the demise of Gin (the fatter of the two fish pictured above) on facebook. She was not there to witness his final hours. She was in America, but her French partner G communicated the sad news, which reached me in London. When I left Paris nine months ago, I bequeathed the fishes I myself had inherited from an Australian friend S (who was moving back home) to K and G.
As it began with facebook, so it continued. I expressed my condoleances for Gin's surviving partner Tonic on facebook, and also his former guardians K and G, and S (now resident in Sydney), with a thought for Italians A and D, who had looked after Gin and Tonic several times whilst I was travelling. S informed two other people who had looked after the fishes before me. He may have swum most of his life in a small tank, but the ripples of his death spread to the other side of the world.
I mention all this only because Gin is clearly a very modern, cosmopolitan fish, a child of the metropolis. He led an exciting life, for a fish, with many journeys around Paris that exposed him to the truly global nature of the city. He came to understand at least five languages (that I know of): British, French, Italian, Australian and American. His death brought together on Facebook people who have never met each other, but are connected through having cared for him during his short life. His case should be studied by academics.

Andrew Marr's Megacities: Mr Bean vs Indiana Jones

The first installement of Andrew Marr's new series Megacities got interesting about two thirds of the way through. First though, we get to watch an awful lot of a rather skeletal Andrew Marr wandering around London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Dhaka and Mexico City with an oversized manbag. He was called Mr Bean in the slums of Dhaka (Bangladesh), but I suspect he'd rather have been taken for Indiana Jones. We saw a Andrew climb solo up a scarily high crane (attached to London's soon-to-be-tallest building The Shard) to speak to the operator about the 'most dangerous job in construction.' We see Andrew being fed in the slums, carrying heavy water jugs in the slums ('No Musharraf, I can manage'), going to the toilet in the slums. Actually we see a lot of Andrew in the slums (quel hero), possibly as the swarms of mosquitos and herds of rats as big as cats kept him awake (what a guy).

Still, it was in this sleepless state that he started to have one of his more interesting thoughts. People in Dhaka aren't real city dwellers, he says, meaning they know and care for those who live next to them (that this surprised him makes me think he's been in London too long). And he latched onto the cliche about putting the village back into the city, but he just about got away with it. Following that thought, he's soon in the distinctly un-villagey Tokyo, the global grandaddy of mega-cities (a moniker I think he also applied to London for being old: here he meant because at over 30 million inhabitants, Japan's capital is the biggest). He visits a very small appartment, which he says is 25 m2 and says he'd be very unhappy living there and feel like a 'nude frog in a box.' Well, I know some real frogs - French people in Paris - who live quite happily in less than 25m2, although admittedly their flats are much better laid out than the glass corridor he visited. Anyway, next he's playing golf on a rooftop with a man who rents himself out for companionship to the friendless. How sad, says Marr. Managing megacities is about getting the balance right between community and efficiency - the implication being Japan has got it wrong. Then woosh, and he's in Mexico City where his inner Indiana comes out. Forget the crime (40 kidnappings and three murders a week) and enjoy the dancing, he says, making friends with persistent females who won't let him finish his piece to camera. He can't keep the smile off his face (maybe this was filmed before the Mega-injunction). This is an incredibly liveable city, inspite of the planners worst efforts, he says. Viva la Mexica (actually he didn't say this, but we get it: he loves Mexico). Grrr, I said to the television, and not because of the dancing. Yes, my dear Andrew, fun of the unplanned kind is often the best. But spontaneous though it may be, you can also help foster fun by creating (dare I say planning) the kinds of environment in which it is likely to thrive. If you want fun, you head to the park or the beach, and not to an underground car park. And while the dances were (or at least appeared to be) relatively unplanned, they were dancing in the zocolas - the town squares - in Mexico City. Someone planned for those, Mr Marr.

China's ghost cities

Normally, a ghost city is a place deserted after its industry declined and jobs shifted elsewhere, or after its heart was destroyed by war. But what about cities built for millions, but never inhabited? This craziness really exists in China. This documentary makes the waste and excesses of the West pale in comparison.

St Pancras Renaissance Hotel

Since I moved to London, I've been watching the Victorian gothic towers of Sir George Gilbert Scott's Midland Grand and waiting for the grand re-opening of this 'castle ontop a station'. Sadly, I didn't get an invite, but I did get the chance to check it out for drinks (at the Booking Office bar.) The 128-year old building has been empty for some time, saved from demolition after a campaign by my uncle's favourite poet Sir John Betjeman (who called it "too beautiful and too romantic to survive" in a world of tower blocks and concrete). It has recovered from a stint as offices for British Rail thanks to realator Harry Handelsman, who bought the building in 2005. Renovation cost upwards of £200 million, not surprising really when the wallpaper in one suite alone cost £47,000 to make and £12,000 to fit.

The lobby is spacious and delicately beautiful. I was delighted to see they'd use the same cobalt blue for the metal ceiling buttresses (is that the right word?) as the station. It makes the hotel feel very much part of London, and very much part of the Kings Cross regeneration. The bar was Victorian cosy - a starched white blend of traditional and modern - if a little gloomy. But I must go back for a proper tour, as I failed to see the fairytale glamour of the grand staircase.

How Zurich makes trams wait for trains

You know it's going to be an academic sort of conference with a title like 'Using innovative transport technologies to stimulate regional development: sustainable, cost-effective solutions to improve accessibility to, from and within peripheral regions in North-West Europe.' Still, I was excited about the opportunity to hang out with planning guru Sir Peter Hall, and having written about some of Europe's transport projects (Eurotunnel and SNCF's ambitions to make France the centre of a European fast train network), I was interested to hear what the various EU commission officials and transport planners had to say.

SPH (Sir Peter Hall: usually I use the journalistic tradition of referring to people on second reference by their surname, but reverence for the man is so great he is never referred to without the Sir) introduced his latest project: Sintropher. One of the most ridiculous acronyms I have ever come across, it stands for Sustainable, INtegrated, Tram-based tRansport fOr periPHeral European Regions and it's basically about tram-train connections in outlying European areas such asw Blackpool (which - interesting fact - has had a tram since 1885).

We also heard how the EU commission wants to use its billions (1.5 trillion euros over 20 years to be precise) to create a coherent European transport network that will help meet its convergence objective: connecting the periphery to the core will help struggling regions raise their GDP.

In the 'masterclass' session, I heard Michele Dix, head of planning at Transport for London, talk about how she runs the 24 million trips a day in the capital. I asked her why London's answer to making it easier to switch from one mode of transport to the other is not to make the timetables match up, but rather to increase the frequency of services. Surely, I was thinking, there must be a more intelligent way. If they can do it in Zurich, then why can't we do it here. But no, not when you can't rely on services arriving when they should.

Most interesting was the presentation by Dominik Bruehwiler, head of transport planning for Zuercher Verkehrsverbund (which I think means Zurich transport system). I discovered that making trams wait for trains does not require some super complicated mathematical formula (as I had suspected). They simply make all journey times coming into Zurich multiples of fiveteen minutes (Switzerland is a small place) leaving at 1, 2, 3 or 4 minutes past the hour and arriving at 53, 54, 55, 56 minutes to the hour (or equivalent time for quarter and half past), meaning everyone can make their connection. A photo of Zurich station at 20 minutes past the hour shows a deserted place: all the activity happens around the 15 minute mark. The speed of the trains is not fast on international comparisons, but the total trip time is competitive, he said. Plus timetables are easy to memorise. The system works because the average arriving delay is 70 seconds (and the system is built to cope with delays of up to 180 seconds). The system is used intensively: if the journeys were made by road they would have to build a 14-land motorway, Bruehwiler said. Where the Swiss struggle is working with other train networks. Their timetable for 2019 was set to the minute in 2007. But France and Germany decide only (!) one year before. Lots of international trains (many of them late) are integrated into the Swiss network, sowing un-Swiss and headache-inducing impredictability. Interestingly, the Swiss seem to prefer that their tax money subsidises public transport rather than roads. Government is often by referendum in Switzerland and since 1982 all proposed railway and tram systems have been approved wheras all new road building has been rejected.

Singapore

Singapore hosts the most beautiful modern architecture I have ever come across. I have never been to Adu Dhabi or Dubai (beyond the airport at least), but the towers of New York, London's City or Canary Wharf, Paris' La Defense, or Honk Kong have nothing on this tiny city state. It's not just the buildings, in fact it's not really about the buildings. It's about how they work together and with the space around them. My hotel was near Marina Bay, home to the year-old Marina Bay Sands, a gargantuan, three-towered complex that resembles variously a ship, a weird three legged prarie dog, or a wingless plane resting on top of three skyscrapers. With more than 2,500 rooms, it dominates the area and at night laser displays from the roof top bar ensure it attracts attention. I'm not sure that I like the building itself, but it creates a dynamic, playful - joyful even - atmosphere and blends well with surroundings that include the lotus-shaped Art Science Museum, the many towers of the central business district, and from certain angles (i.e. the waterside dinery where I ate one evening) the parliament building. The open spaces are key. Since Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles founded Singapore, there has been an open field known as The Padang which has succeeded in evading the developers even as it remains at the heart of the CBD. It makes for great vistas, and helps to make the concrete streets feel un-stifling even in the humid, midday heat. The Marina Bay area is wonderful - and completely safe - to walk around at night when the buildings glimmer magically in the water.

Given Singapore's concerns about water shortages, the city also appears to be taking increasing heed of environmental considerations. 'Green movement on the rise' was the headline of a special edition of the Strait Times on May 20 dedicated to the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) awards. This year, a new category recognised the greenest architects, engineers, advocates and innovators involved in the built environment. The winning architect was RSP Architects Planners & Engineers director Vivien Heng, the woman behind the Woh Hup Building.
Singapore is often accused of being sterile, with harsh punishments for those who transgress rules against chewing gum, spitting or generally anything that displeases the government. Certainly, its a very clean place: the Indian temples have some of the smells and the sounds of India, but they are so clean people walk around them in socks (something not advised in India). You can drink the water. Everything works. The metro is clean, efficient, and air-conditioned. And the city is incredibly easy to navigate even for someone who has just arrived. It's like Asia for Dummies. Very pleasant for a visitor, but possibly a little stifling for residents.

Thanks to a uniform electoral makeup (a consequence of housing policies designed to ensure a balanced social mix), the same People's Action Party has won every election since self-government in 1959. While I was there, television showed the founding father of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, 87, stepping down from cabinet. He was Singapore's first prime minister, serving for 31 years until 1990, and had been in government ever since. Support for his party has been falling, and to counter this, the government has been relaxing its grip. Signs all over the city don't just forbid you from doing things, they explain why you shouldn't. Is that progress? I don't know. For me, Singapore was not the sterile place I imagined. I quite enjoyed my stay, notably a fabulous day cycling around the Palau Ubin island, a lazy backwater compared to the bustling metropolis. Just 7 km by 2 km, it's a tiny place, but it's supposed to give visitors an idea of how Singapore would've been like 50 years ago. I'm not sure I saw any construction over one storey high! How quickly things change..... I hope the mangrove swamps of Palau Ubin are still there in ten years time......

Boris bikes

As a keen cyclist (it is my main mode of transport), I am a huge supporter of the Boris Bike scheme, even if I don't have a membership card because it doesn't extend to Greater London. It's small and umambitious in comparison to Paris' Velib, but it does seem to be picking up steam. The first day of the Velib experiment was a glorious sunny day, and I remember cycling through the streets of Paris where it seemed like everyone was on a bike. The city had woken up and fallen in love with the bicycle. I was so moved I almost wrote to Delanoe to share my experience and thank him. I thought that for him, seeing a city so transformed, bringing pleasure to so many people, must be better than being rich or famous!

Not so the Boris, or should I say Barclays, scheme. I have never dared to rent a bike because I wouldn't know where to put it back. There are few bike stations compared to Paris, and it doesn't extend to the places I cycle. However I am seeing more and more people on the Boris bikes. And if this makes Londoners wake up to the fact that cycling is a pleasant and efficient way to get around the city, then all the better. If enough people get on their bikes, it should increase awareness and safety. One of the chilling things about cycling here is all the stories about women cyclists being killed by lorries......