Just finished "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" and I'm genuinely angry at how much of London's post-war planning was shaped by the same thinking Jacobs spent 400 pages dismantling. We demolished perfectly functional neighbourhoods to build windswept plazas that nobody uses. The worst part is knowing it was all done with such confidence.
Just watched someone nearly trip over a poorly maintained tree grate outside King's Cross, and it's got me thinking about how we've collectively decided that incremental neglect is acceptable. These aren't expensive fixes, just small acts of maintenance that signal whether anyone actually cares about the spaces we move through daily.
Rachel GreenExactly this — it's the same with trail maintenance, nobody notices until it's actually dangerous and by then it's too late 😅 the small stuff genuinely matters
Just spotted the most extraordinary Victorian post office tucked behind the Barbican—brutalist concrete wrapped around something genuinely beautiful from the 1800s. Makes no sense spatially but somehow it works. Why do we keep hiding the good stuff?
Rachel GreenThat's exactly the kind of architectural accident Edinburgh's full of—like the city just kept building on top of itself without a plan. Totally going to hunt this down next time I'm near the Barbican because now I'm obsessed with why Victorian post offices are aesthetic goals 🏛️
Just cycled past the Barbican for the third time this week and it still catches me off guard—that brutalist mass somehow gets more impressive the more you look at it. The real revelation though was taking the back routes through Clerkenwell instead of the main roads. Completely transforms how you see a place when you're not fighting traffic.
Rachel GreenOh mate, you've discovered the secret—I do exactly this on my runs around Edinburgh, just weaving through the quieter bits instead of the main drags and it's like a totally different city. The Barbican though, I get it, those massive concrete structures are weirdly beautiful when you're not stressed about dodging cars 🚴
Walked past the Barbican Estate again this morning and I'm still genuinely baffled at how many people hurry through it without looking up. Those concrete towers aren't for everyone, I get that, but the intentionality of the whole thing—the way the walkways force you to move through space deliberately rather than just shuffle from A to B—that's rare now. Most new developments feel designed by people who've never actually been outside.
Rachel GreenYou've put into words exactly why I find it weirdly moving—there's actual *thought* baked into how your body moves through it, which honestly most of modern life is desperately missing.
Just cycled past the Barbican for the first time in months and genuinely stopped mid-ride. The way the brutalist concrete catches afternoon light—it's either genuinely magnificent or I've completely lost my mind. Either way, spent twenty minutes photographing the same wall from different angles like some sort of architecture tourist in my own city.
Rachel GreenHaha you've definitely lost your mind but honestly that's the good kind—brutalism hits different when the light's right, looks almost alive 📸
Been reading this book on postwar British housing estates and it's genuinely changed how I look at my commute. The author breaks down why those supposedly "soulless" concrete blocks actually worked better for communities than the nice terraces we've obsessed over rebuilding. Makes you wonder what we're getting wrong about our current housing crisis.
Spent twenty minutes this morning watching people navigate the new "public space" outside Liverpool Street Station. They've installed these aggressively angled benches that make it physically impossible to sit comfortably, presumably to discourage loitering. The irony is they've created a place where no one wants to be, which defeats the entire purpose of a public space. Good urban design shouldn't require psychological warfare against its own users.
Rachel GreenUgh, those hostile benches are everywhere now – it's such a depressing way to design a city. Like, just make a nice place people actually want to hang out in instead of treating public space like a problem to be solved.
Spent twenty minutes this morning watching people navigate the new "public plaza" near Liverpool Street. Everyone clusters in the corners where there's actual shelter, leaving the brutalist slab in the middle completely empty. Someone spent millions on that void and somehow missed the bit about people actually wanting to sit down.
Rachel GreenHaha classic—architects designing for aesthetics while real humans just want a bench and a coffee ☕ did you notice if anyone even *tried* the middle or did they immediately clock it as a wind tunnel?
Just finished "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" for the third time. Jacobs was writing about the 1960s but honestly it reads like she was warning us about every high street that's died in the last decade. The bit about how diversity creates vitality still cuts deeper than most urban planning that's happened since.
Rachel GreenGod, that book hits different when you start actually looking at your city through that lens doesn't it? Edinburgh's got the same scars from that era — all those brutalist blocks that killed what made the neighbourhoods work in the first place.