Happy "He Wasn't Turkish, He Was A Cappadocian Greek" Day to all who celebrate.

Oh its totally a banger, UK has the least state capacity in Europe when it comes to procurement or industrial policy and has been for decades. Bulgaria is more capable. Labour's problems are "self-inflicted" but also consistent enough that its a structure. The UK can't reform without breaking.

Not so much sticky as "if you have amateur generalist politicians there for 2-3 years, running generalist civil servants there for 2-3 years and weak local government you'll get lots of stupid policy in rail space that works on longer horizons"

What an absolutely mad statistic. I bet in person capita terms that the real outliers are going to be Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Europe's electricity: 29% fossil fuels in 2024, down from 53% in 2005. Progress. But transport is still 92% fossil. Buildings: 71%. Industry: 61%. And 95% of EU oil and 88% of gas imported. Switching suppliers doesn't fix this. Electrification and efficiency do. More here: rdcu.be/feOjc

The Swedish are blasting an underground 25+ (many of the bays are back-out sawtooth, which Canadian buses hate) bay bus terminal out of solid rock. This underground bus terminal is costing just $1billion CAD (converted from SEK), to show how much of a cost and infrastructure problem we have here.

Leaving Avenue Road Another version of this shot capturing the overlooked Croydon Tram network. Here's a photo of a Tram departing from Avenue Road Tram Stop.

everything is gender and we are being held back by the widely held belief that being a woman is bourgeoisie

Recording this podcast was a blast! The First Punic War is often neglected in favor of its more land-based sequel, but it was an enormous conflict with earth-shaking world-historic ramifications - all the more interesting because it was a (as Hoyos puts it) an 'unplanned' war that got out of hand.

From Australia: "New research has found public transport fares have not been a decisive factor in pushing people to shift from car to public transport." "Better public transport access, coverage, reliability, and travel time have a greater impact than price in changing long-term commuting habits."

It also the double standard. We are fine with other basic necessities like food to be provided by for-profit firms. My stupid impossible dream* is to make buying a house like a car (Japan gets close to this) i.e. big consumer durable. *housing alas is not just for living

Let's let taxes be taxes and housing be housing and not try to do secret tax-and-transfer through weird deed restrictions that end up driving up housing costs overall

Inclusionary zoning is bad!

you're going to need more than two space marines tho

This Friday, come join ETA for TOD: Transit-Oriented Drinks, April! Join us for drinks, transit discussion, and transit advocacy! Friday April 24, 2026 from 6-8pm at Vanderbilt Market 45th & Vanderbilt Behind GCT All are welcome!

gonna have an essay drop tomorrow with the tagline "Woke 2 is Woke 1 with an honest relation to power," and i think this is an almost exact illustration of sharon's point

"Again", its been fundamental to the politics of the UK since 2007, the ability of England based commentators to pretend otherwise is a big reason why we've had a generation of systemic policy failures across the board.

I mean the Tories in the UK are doing this to Surrey. Surrey.

If the Government wants 1.5 million homes, it needs medium sites in cities to come forward. Moving affordable housing contributions off-site would help unlock those schemes and support wider growth goals. Read more👇 buff.ly/327pa8v

For some reason councils support artisanal tax collection *just* for social housing. Haggling and bartering like they've just come back from a week in Marrakech. 'We could let them start building today and pay a 20% cash at the end, or waste years and hire s106 spivs to get to 12.67% in flats?'

There is only one working class, the Professional Managerial Class. There is only one working class party, the Democratic Party. There is only one working class newspaper, The Financial Times. There is only one working class heartland, Northern Virginia

People for some reason when they learn that making the already cost advantageous form of transportation marginally more cost advantageous doesn't change people's decision calculous all that much

I actually think Justinian's conquests were probably an net positive for the Empire. You see how much damage the Normans in S.Italy inflict once they are lost in the 1070's. I blame Maurice preferring to get territory not money from Khusro. ip-quarterly.com/en/why-europ...

Obviously this is a ritual deposit. (Archaeology joke)

I have been told this because East-West Rail didn't have a record keeping system to manage assuring things were safe. SPVs are bad.

England is a country where you need to beg the government to start running trains on the railway line they finished last year. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

No new projects are getting funded under Trump, so now is a great time for agencies to get serious and read every word of transitcost.com. Of course what they’ll actually do is just sit on their hands till the next administration and hope the money continues to rain down like it has been.

"men only want to talk about ancient rome but women only want to talk about the industrial revolution" awww yeah NOW we're gendermaxxing baby

A reason to be bearish about the idea that “reform” of itself will save the permanent civil service. Often, the politicians’ critiques of what’s wrong are inchoate or completely contradictory

Odd to recall that Starmer’s critique of the state has hitherto been that it is too slow, too risk averse, too procedural, too obstructive, too lacking in initiative.. “a cottage industry of blockers and checkers…” “you pull a lever and nothing happens..”

On top of everything else, the level of 'embattled' behaviour going on with senior ministers and their comfort zone of lashing out of their traditional supporters shows the government is both in disarray and denial.

I love that you can see old Middlesex in the map of attachment to London of London assembly constituencies. jackshaw.substack.com/p/londons-br...

List of places by physical difficulty of building high-speed rail. Easy: Northern Germany Poland US Midwest England Central Canada Pakistan Medium: France Spain US South China India Indonesia Egypt Hard: Japan Korea Taiwan Italy Vietnam Mexico Alps Cthulhu fhtagn: Philippines UK-Ireland Jeju

This chart has left me trying to guess my own annual egg consumption. I reckon something like 350 directly but presumably quite a few more as an ingredient in other products? Wouldn’t be surprised by 400 a year. economist.com/britain/2026...

Screwball spy comedy about an SBU hit squad and GRU hit squad assigned by their respective sides to assassinate the same Donetsk warlord in 2016 and how they constantly trip over each other and get in the way of each other's plots.

Liverpool highlights a key issue for UK cities. Some of the post-war neighbourhoods with the best accessibility are also the least dense. These are the places policy needs to target for densification. Join our launch event to find out how👇 buff.ly/JgzmjBt

Evergreen Americana www.youtube.com/shorts/uwE63...

Need less "why is the north of england poor" discourse, and more "why are large german cities so unproductive" discourse ec.europa.eu/eurostat/sta...

A Russian woman from Tuapse no longer likes living there. She says some drones are bothering her.

Pedestrian Observations: How Much Community Outreach Does the Urban Institute Think Italy and Turkey Do? pedestrianobservations.com/2026/04/20/h...

Good post by @alonlevy.bsky.social in the UK context I also see an issue that this process bloat happens when there are legitimacy questions. UK's low turnout, low vote share government doesn't have legitimacy, so it outsources it. pedestrianobservations.com/2026/04/20/h...

Thoroughly wrong. Turkey is secularizing at fast speeds. The AKP will have been the ikhwanis high point. The forces of demographic change, now hitting even Kurds, mass urbanization and modern society are at work there to.

One of the anecdotal facts that I use to support my claim that Italy is a "Country of Cities" in a way France isn't is the fact that the modal name of the level of government that roughly corresponds to "counties" is: ITA: Province of _Major City Name_ FR: River or topographical feature Name

Honestly, it's the "who with?" that is the most damning indictment of the state of the party. You're a party with 400 MPs and you implicitly think none of them are fit for PM? Not a great message. Above anything, it just shows a paucity of imagination.

I think this is right, and also an underplayed reason for his success. For all his gestures to the far right, Farage remains a creature of 90s Euroscepticism, just about able to cling to old Tory traditions and remain within the accepted bounds of British political culture. Restore...isn't that.

Unfunded IZ presupposes a permenant housing shortage: the moment rents fall too low to cross-subsidize the unfunded mandate, development stops until rents rise again. It's housing policy pseudoscience.

Since I’m preaching to the urbanist choir and we’re all anti-unfunded IZ, I’ll take this a step forward: funded IZ does too, it just changes the consequence – instead of destroying production, it destroys your city budget. We got a hint of this with NYC’s CityFHEPS voucher program

"These decadent Empires are doomed, that's why our parents moved here and I refuse to learn non-English languages, anybody who questions my hypocrisy is a racist Imperialist" Also the idea that the US is a "dying Empire" when still an insanely large and rich country is absurd.

Some exciting personal news - I’ve joined @yimbyalliance.org as Policy Lead. After a few years out of housing I am BACK in the game! Very excited to be getting involved again in the fight for better, more affordable housing 🏘️