www.ft.com/content/a1b9... vs. www.ft.com/content/1213... (UK housing affordability/wage growth improves as UK builds fewer houses: just a reminder that building new homes is the dumbest, slowest way to produce housing affordability, out of kilter with planetary boundaries and social justice)

“Driving less has significant environmental, social and health benefits too.” (2026 and people apparently still need a primer on why public transport and cycling is good?) www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

even a brompton's shadow is dope AF

(If the new ‘regenerative material turn’ might bring the politics of William Morris, Ruskin, WR Lethaby and Ebenezer Howard—they’d be my equivalent of the ‘John&Paul&George&Ringo’ t-shirt, by the way— back into play, but via Matrix, that’d be a very good thing) www.ribaj.com/intelligence...

“Duffy’s approach to architecture – inquisitive, evolutionary and mediating between the changing needs of client and user – remains relevant as ever” (RIP Frank Duffy. His ‘shearing layers’ is probably single biggest conceptual influence on my thinking as a designer) www.ribaj.com/intelligence...

“Australia once sold itself a dream of homeownership as the foundation of a fair society, but that dream has been steadily supplanted by something far more corrosive – a national addiction to property that is reshaping our cities in its image.” architectureau.com/articles/how...

"The Bill, as introduced by the Scottish Government, would instruct Ministers to publish a community wealth building statement. This would set out the measures they intend to take in relation to community wealth building." (Interesting, Scotland) www.parliament.scot/bills-and-la...

⚠️ The Real Housing Crisis IIPP Visiting Professor of Practice @cityofsound.bsky.social argues against the prevailing "build, baby, build" narrative in current housing policy in his recent essay for the @designmuseum.bsky.social's Future Observatory Journal. 🔗 Read it here: buff.ly/EFkffUM

"Flying foxes were responsible for the creation of more than 91 million trees, a majority of them eucalypts. For Australia’s economy, that means somewhere in the range of $195 million to $673 million per year contributed by the bats" (Bats much appreciated!) www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/s...

(Very good piece. As such cities and towns behin to shrink due to demogrpahixs, and property market design encourage buildings to lie empty, increased fire risk emerges. Already a concern in Japan, due to akiya emerging everywhere) www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

“AI can speed up or even fully automate quite a few tasks within a job without threatening to automate the whole thing… Could either be existentially awful news for the affected workers, exciting news or anywhere between the two” giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

“this award will do nothing to suggest that the Pritzker is keeping up with the changing generational landscape of architecture, in which that Randian myth of lone male genius is gradually fading…” giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

“Chief executive of Acoss, who undertook the study, says ‘it’s clear this tax break funnels billions into the wealthiest parts of our country’” (Hardly surprising; still damning) www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

“In China, one social media trend hangs on the idea that a life in the US is always one step from disaster, while another in the US has gen Z revelling in Chinese lifestyle hacks” (Of course not quite as bjnary as this suggests but interesting nonetheless) www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Another packed house for our public talks series here at Melbourne School of Design linked to our M—Arch thesis: tonight the ever-brilliant Clare Cousins, one of the best architects in town

Oil prices wouldn't be all over the news today if more of our economy was powered by local, secure renewable energy. This isn't an "energy crisis". It's a fossil fuel crisis. 44% of UK electricity came from renewables in 2025. More of that plus an electrified economy => no more oil shocks.

“Until now, creativity has been stifled by the need to acquire playing skills.” (Dubious take, but this clip is still too good—having been a schoolboy in 1986. Something a little The Day Today about the whole thing, incl. Miss Tester's somewhat clipped accent) www.theverge.com/entertainmen...

"Artek purchases Finnish forest to protect biodiversity and secure future birch supply: The design company takes responsibility for full product lifecycle – starting from when raw material is still in the ground" (This is hugely heartening—and smart) www.artek.fi/en/news/arte...

“Dr Hannah Gould on eco-funerals, being ‘the death person’ and the one thing everyone should know before they die” (Nice interview with my great colleague Hannah Gould) www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

(Enjoying the pragmatic bluntness of the industrial design for what looks like a 'robot ute') www.appliedev.com

“Paris school streets are raising the global bar for children’s wellbeing” (Such amazing work by Paris) giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

"FUPS data are clearly disputable facts, but they can be drawn on as a form of evidence to aid decisions in the swampy lowlands of practice." (FUPS 'flawed, uncertain, proximate and scarce data', by the ever brilliant Miranda Wolpert + Harry Rutter. Instant fave) pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

"We were surprised by how large the share of companies is that are doubling down on gas and oil,” says study author Johannes Stangl of the CSH. “The energy transition is practically not happening in the Hungarian economy,” Thurner emphasizes." (Reinforces Fressoz's thesis) csh.ac.at/news/can-eur...

Very impressed with my students in the City Leadership multidisciplinary ‘intensive elective’ I run at Melbourne School of Design—fantastic work! I had ten days with them, working through the strategic design playbook + @iipp-ucl.bsky.social dynamic capabilities framework …

First talk in this semester’s public lecture series ‘Beyond The Classroom’, which runs alongside design thesis in the M—Arch here at Melbourne School of Design, feat. @ssdh.studio — lovely, thoughtful, careful work … Talks are curated and hosted by students; series led by @roryhyde.bsky.social

"Some things are American and you just have to accept it" (This is good. Trying to do a tech startup solely with EU infrastructure. Reminds me somewhat of Thomas Thwaites' iconic 'toaster project' - www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-... - but still: valiant!) www.coinerella.com/made-in-eu-i...

I made a thing. I hope you like it (feel free to share) secondpress.club here's why I made it (aside from just for the fun!) dgen.net/0/2026/02/25...

Cycling is social. Design to enable it.

(This is really excellent, from my colleague @rainerkattel.bsky.social at UCL. Universities today essentially mitigate against meaningful work. Rainer’s suggestions indicate another way—not backwards, though it’s informed by long history, but forwards) rainerkattel.substack.com/p/ucl-is-200...

Farrelly: “We should interrogate all strategic city-making decisions with scepticism, insist on a true and thoughtful citizen voice, and fill our cities and neighbourhoods with ever-increasing networks of trams” architectureau.com/articles/a-w...

“In January 2026, only 98 diesel cars were sold across all of Norway, alongside 29 hybrids and 7 petrol-only cars.” (Seven!) electrek.co/2026/02/03/e...

Speaking of: a use for some of China's increasingly 'baggy' over-built cities: "The empty boulevards that once symbolized the mainland’s property bust now serve as testing grounds for hundreds of autonomous vehicles" restofworld.org/2025/china-o...

In Los Angeles this weekend, I took a ride in a Waymo, which reminded me it's over a decade since I wrote 'The Street As Platform 2050', speculating about the impact of fleets of autonomous vehicles (which I called 'Drivers', perhaps a subconscious nod to Ryan Gosling) medium.com/butwhatwasth...

"There's always going to be debate in city planning. Always. But there's good faith debate, based on disagreements, and then there's deliberate lies and misinformation." — @brenttoderian.bsky.social. #UrbanTruth

Thanks @christian.bsky.social ! There’s a refined version here medium.com/a-chair-in-a...

⚠️ The Real Housing Crisis IIPP Visiting Professor of Practice @cityofsound.bsky.social argues against the prevailing "build, baby, build" narrative in current housing policy in his recent essay for the @designmuseum.bsky.social's Future Observatory Journal. 🔗 Read it here: buff.ly/zfriIhQ

The Australian govt hands out $26B per year in nature-harming subsidies This represents ~4% of the total federal budget Or twice as much as the federal govt invests in supporting government schools nationally Or 25 times more than they spend on looking after nature via @biodivcouncil.bsky.social

“A stratified approach, with some countries forming a federalising core while others stay in the looser outer layers, would help Europe keep up in a newly harsh geopolitical world. The European Onion is a joke worthy of serious times” economist.com/europe/2026/...

(This is a very good vision, and promisingly the app is funded by transit agencies and users…) transitapp.com/vision

"China is racing ahead in electrification, while the US turns its back on green energy in favour of a new era of fossil fuel machismo. An alignment between the three major petrostates— the US, Saudi Arabia and Russia—no longer looks implausible" (V good from Tooze) www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLnx...

this was shared by Adam Tooze in his newsletter this morning - Brexit could not have been a worse move, pretty much

Writing about the Narkomfin building, and the Melnikov House, in Moscow in 2014. medium.com/iamacamera/m...

“Sheffield Design Lab took place in November 2025, as part of Future Observatory and Dark Matter Labs’ UK 2040 programme” (I was delighted to be able to run this strategic design lab in my hometown of Sheffield, recently, with @darkmatterlabs.org x Future Obs.) futureobservatory.org/news/sheffie...

bauhausearth-toolkit.com (This is extremely good work. Well done, and thank you!)

“The Australian government spends billions of dollars more on tax breaks for property investors than on social housing, homelessness and rent assistance combined, according to research by the Australian Council of Social Service (Acoss).” (See also) www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

“Australia’s capital gains tax discount will cost nearly $250bn over the next decade, more than twice as much as the concession has cost in its entire 25-year history” (Top 1% will receive 60% of benefits, along with retirees. Seriously, why do we bother?) www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

"The evidence shows that house prices react to these risks only after disaster has struck ... Housing is too important an asset to be mispriced across the economy" (The Economist inadvertently suggests housing is too important to be left to the free market?) www.economist.com/leaders/2024...

"Albanese government to sell off $3bn worth of historic defence sites amid push to free up space for new homes" www.theguardian.com/australia-ne... {Oh for goodness' sake, just build some public housing on some public land)

Interesting to see even The Economist now noting that supply-side measures to reduce house prices will barely move the needle (of course makes a difference—but barely) www.economist.com/britain/2024... as noted in my piece for Future Observatory, fojournal.org/essay/the-re...

⚠️ The Real Housing Crisis IIPP Visiting Professor of Practice @cityofsound.bsky.social argues against the prevailing "build, baby, build" narrative in current housing policy in his new essay for the @designmuseum.bsky.social's Future Observatory Journal. 🔗 Read it here: buff.ly/EFkffUM