Simon Munk

So, #Andor then? I'm most of way through series & not a huge Star Wars fan but it's cracking. A horrifyingly grim portrayal of the endless, repetitive bureacracy of fascism, of genocide by slow strangulation, it's also an inventive low budget sci-fi that uses London locations including the Barbican & Brunswick Centre (and Polaroid camera props). Screengrab: https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/y8ty9g/the_barbican_finally_made_it_into_star_wars/ (Alt text: Barbican bridge reimagined in Star Wars Andor series)

So @JohnDMStewart appears to be the UK Noise Association chap who has spent the last year attacking LTNs and those who support LTNs on twitter. I had to block him there as his views were unevidenced and he supported toxic attacks on others including doxxing attempts. IMO unless he has changed tack radically, he has no place on an instance marked 'urbanists' let alone one marked 'social'.

@Tradescant@mastodon.social @geewhiz@urbanists.social IMO it's not even a popularity issue. Theme parks and shopping malls are popular. Across UK 65-70% of survey results reliably show folks actively support schemes to reduce or restrict motor vehicle access while circa 20% oppose. It is a very loud minority that opposes. But a minority that politicians demographically match to & are often drawn from. Politicians to wildly generalise don't walk or cycle, they do own cars and drive.

@garius@mastodon.me.uk ah London in the rain. A beautiful piece and very reminiscent of my London. See also the thin skin between aloof disinterest that most folks see in Londoners and riotous bonhomie or at least genuine warmth that can often be broken on late night tube and bus journeys.

@ianbetteridge@mastodon.me.uk this is really stark isn't it? Folks not well equipped to separate fact from fiction & those who have most been shafted by successive governments lashing out & directed at vulnerable to do so.
Meanwhile blue bird is enabling a massive slew of far right conspiracy theorists, trolls, cranks etc. to dominate that space so leaching into mainstream.

@spacehobo@teh.entar.net @nuttyxander@mastodon.scot there's a bunch of cycle parking that's never full just round back of (ex-)City Hall. I've often left my bike there. Exposed to elements. But thieves will steer clear due to prevalence of security IMO.

@RantyHighwayman@mas.to @confusedMiddleAgedDad@mastodon.social what happened to C40 Cities? And before that, Agenda 21? I appear to have fallen behind on my sinister rulers of the world are actually fairly benign policy wonks conspiracies.

@sam@urbanists.social New Year is a big holiday here. Will DM links in a few days.

@jroper@transportation.social @BrentToderian@mastodon.online @dublincyclingcampaign@mastodon.world IMO a mess of reasons. 1. We generally have more mature public transport networks. 2. Building more public transport network is relative easy and uncontroversial, at least compared to cycle networks. 3. Mode share of cycling needs more work to boost. 4. Fine grain journeys as others have pointed out will be done more by cycling than bus etc. eg European city planning.

@sam@urbanists.social LTNs are "Low Traffic Neighbourhoods". These area wide approaches to cutting 'ratrun' or through motor traffic have been done for decades but circa 2016 folks like me started repopularising the idea - the Dutch call them "Woonerf" or increasingly 'how we design housing areas', and indeed pretty much all British housing estates developed since 1960s are LTNs effectively. Since 2020, we have seen many English authorities roll out LTNs and prior to then Hackney and Waltham Forest in London...

@WilliamNB@toot.bike & @spacehobo@teh.entar.net that genuinely useful, if intuitive for me, responses. But I'm not sure they answer my original question. Is the answer: we should be less aggressive (have you met the planet?)? &/or that we all need to take more collective responsibility for moderating content (what we see, what we post etc.)? That feels intuitive again - but if that's what we want, perhaps we should say more clearly (@thomholwerda@social.tchncs.de). Mods on urbanists.social seem to be doing that. Good. Happy with that.