“The Garden of Cosmic Speculation” is an amazing garden landscape in the hills at Crawick, Scotland (about thirty-five miles north of Carlisle/Gretna Green). It appears that it’s now maturing nicely. Somehow I totally missed news of the official opening of this, back in July. (Video).
Archive for the ‘Regeneration’ Category
Garden of Cosmic Speculation
15 Sep 2015 at 19:51
David Haden
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The insect hotel of Uttoxeter
14 Aug 2015 at 11:42
David Haden
Artist(s), Regeneration, Stoke-on-Trent
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A super new ‘insect hotel’ is due to open very soon at Uttoxeter in North Staffordshire. A very nice bit of garden/architectural/eco design.
Google StreetView: Mongolia
28 Jul 2015 at 06:42
David Haden
Cool sites, Mapping, Photographers, Regeneration
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Google StreetView, Mongolia. Off-road trails, too. “Last fall we strapped a Street View camera onto a four-wheel drive pickup truck to begin capturing 360-imagery from rugged Mongolian roads. Since then we’ve also gone off-road to capture images of the country’s most beautiful places with Ariuntuul, our Mongolian Trekker operator, who carried the 18-kg Street View […]
Budget speech
08 Jul 2015 at 19:23
David Haden
Creative industries, Regeneration, Stoke-on-Trent
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Highlights of this afternoon’s Budget speech in Parliament, the measures likely to affect smaller creative businesses and the self-employed: * “across England, [we are] launching a new round of Enterprise Zones for smaller towns” * “The new National Living Wage will be compulsory. Working people aged 25 and over will receive it. It will start […]
Wolverhampton’s Great Exhibitions
20 Jun 2015 at 22:59
David Haden
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“Displaying the Black Country: Wolverhampton’s great exhibitions of 1869 and 1902”. Another article has pictures, such as this of the 1902 Wolverhampton exhibition grounds…
Sidewalk Labs
Google’s new Sidewalk Labs… “Sidewalk Labs, an urban innovation company that will develop technology at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds, with a focus on improving city life for residents, businesses and governments.”
The rural dimension
A Birmingham Post blogger on “The forgotten rural pieces of the West Midlands”… “A significant rural-urban fringe surrounds “Greater Birmingham” where the wider rural development dimension has been largely forgotten and neglected in policy and decision making.” … “I arranged a seminar with a colleague last week, on the rural West Midlands. This blog highlights […]
The Economist on universal income
23 May 2015 at 14:36
David Haden
Artist(s), Regeneration, Zeitgeist
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The costs of a ‘basic universal income’ are concisely outlined of in the latest edition of The Economist. Too expensive, they fear, at least using the Swiss approach. But at the end of the article they point out that Alaska already gives all its citizens $1,900 a year dividend from its oil fund. So might […]
Crossing the Pennines Heritage Trail
21 May 2015 at 22:03
David Haden
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Crossing the Pennines Heritage Trail. With a mere £50k Lottery grant, an ancient packhorse trail across the Pennines has been documented and reclaimed/refurbished as a public footpath. Beautiful new milestones are to be added with the help of the Milestone Society, and the Grand Opening will be on Saturday 4th July 2015.
Milestone Society
The Milestone Society, restoring the nation’s historic milestones, mile posts, and finger posts. The Staffordshire milestones and posts are all done by one man…
Litter and fly-tipping in England
27 Mar 2015 at 00:31
David Haden
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New Parliamentary report on Litter and fly-tipping in England. PDF version.
Tech Nation report
05 Feb 2015 at 13:04
David Haden
Birmingham, Creative industries, Mapping, Regeneration, Stoke-on-Trent, Techie
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Tech Nation is a new report which claims to have surveyed the 21 UK digital production clusters outside London. Of such companies formed since 2008, 74 percent were found to be located outside London. Of companies formed since 2010… Birmingham is deemed by the report to be an “early stage” cluster, but has apparently seen […]
A rough guide
“Birmingham? Why send tourists there?” warbles Tim Moore in the Telegraph. His key points seem to be… * Brum is being over-hyped and mis-sold by the city’s PR professionals. The City Centre has shopping and eateries plus a little unchallenging culture, but so do plenty of other places. * Concrete 1970s horror still lies in […]
Jobs per sector, after the recession
28 Dec 2014 at 07:44
David Haden
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An interactive New York Times infographic of who benefited and who lost (per sector) as the USA came out of the great recession…
The Wrekin Giant
The direct express train service from London to Shrewsbury has been reinstated — and it’s not a piffling two-carriage trundler, either. It’s now pulled by a Virgin Super Voyager named ‘The Wrekin Giant’, no less.
i-teams
New research report from Nesta and Bloomberg Philanthropies, i-teams: the teams and funds making innovation happen in governments around the world, from nudgers to nerds… This report tells the stories of 20 teams, units and funds established by governments and charged with making innovation happen. They work across the spectrum of innovation – from focusing […]
Impact Hub Birmingham
09 Dec 2014 at 22:59
David Haden
Artist(s), Birmingham, Regeneration
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Impact Hub Birmingham…
The perfect storm
Pushing the super-accurate period of the UK Met Office weather forecast from 12 to 24 hours is set to save billions of pounds by 2020. The Mail reports savings of “£200bn by 2020”, which seems to be mis-reporting. The BBC seems to more realistically suggest a saving to the nation of £2bn from Sept 2015 […]
Creating Creative Cities
27 Oct 2014 at 22:05
David Haden
Birmingham, Creative industries, Regeneration, Stoke-on-Trent
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A City Growth Commissioner is on the RSA blog today musing on “Creating Creative Cities: How the City Growth Commission report can unlock innovation and entrepreneurship across the UK”. It comes on top of a small avalanche of reports from the Commission, and thus the article’s key suggestions on creativity seem a little underwhelming when […]
Peaky Snappers
22 May 2014 at 08:24
David Haden
Bicycles, Mapping, Photographers, Regeneration, Stoke-on-Trent
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The nearby Peak District National Park is getting the Google Street View treatment, via a new Google Trekker backpack camera system… “we are the first UK national park to get the Trekker backpack. … From the backpack protrudes the Martian-like head with its 15 lenses.”