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Boston, Holland
By Chris MatthewsPump SquareEbb and flow. Drains and Bricks. Boston is man-made: how man battles with fresh and salt water for both trade and development. It all depends on the Witham and the Wash....
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Not Google - Goole
An entrance of international standing - St John's StreetGoole – a wonderfully evocative name resonant of watery isolation. Google self importantly thinks you have misspelt. The name actually derives...
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The Future is Northampton
Distribution Warehouses: from here to the death of the high streetNorthampton is an interesting but unassuming Midlands town which has had a great deal of planned development thrust upon it. It is at...
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Southampton Dreams
After Northampton, Southampton was inevitably the next stop on our tour. The place where Ian Nairn began his road trip exposing the horrors of subtopia (his word) ‘…the end of Southampton will look...
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Brian Clough City (West)
Eighteenth century pioneers: made in DerbyAccording to the European Union Brian Clough City has a metropolitan population of 1.5 million, larger than Glasgow, the second city of the Empire. It is...
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Leith - Sea town mirage
"Hope for me, I hope for you..."Edinburgh in the Festival is at once magnificent, tawdry, chaotic and wonderfully enjoyable. This riotous collision of artistic creativity, street bonhomie,...
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The Universities of Leicester
By Chris MatthewsLeicester is a red brick city and appropriately home to the last of the “red brick” universities. It is also home to De Montfort University, named after the alleged progenitor of...
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Glasgow - city of misguided ambitions
The power of the grid - St Vincent StreetI find geology hard to grasp – those incomprehensible time scales all in three dimensions. But I have just about got the concept of continental drift, which...
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Lincoln – a success story
By Adrian Jones & Chris MatthewsLincoln contemporary - The TerraceLincolnshire, the second largest historic county, is the English equivalent of a fly-over state. Agricultural, sparsely populated...
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Burton upon Trent
by Chris MatthewsBurton on Trent is synonymous with beer. By the late C19th the scale of the brewing industry was global and the industry’s unique historical fabric still shapes the character of the...
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Huddersfield Town
Queensgate Market - one of the great sights of Modernist BritainA generation ago Ian Nairn refereed an architectural and townscape match between Huddersfield Town and close rivals Halifax. His final...
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Glasgow Revisited
You can stick your Englishman's castle - Camphill AvenueWith Scottish secession a distinct possibility we face the horrifying prospect of a permanent Tory Westminster. Even worse, the ex-industrial...
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Bankside, Borough & Bermondsey
Vulliamy's sturgeon - the origin of municipal design in LondonThe annoying thing about exploring London these days is that in virtually all long views the Shard will pop up. It is like an irritating...
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Civilising London Spaces
Tackling oligarchy: wider pavementsLondon is the richest city in the country and its wealth is conspicuously, often obscenely, displayed. At the same time public spending per capita is higher in London...
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Newport-on-Usk
Concrete history (not meaningless league tables)The think tank Centre for Cities recently published ‘Cities Outlook 2012’ which concludes that Newport’s economic prospects are about the worst in...
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Oi Southampton masterplanners! Read our blog
Distinctive Southampton #1 Medieval & GeorgianLast year we blogged about Southampton, the soon to be Premier City of the South and pointed out the yawning gap between the grand rhetoric of the...
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Woolwich Equitable?
The American colonies grew restless - Dial ArchSouth East London is another country, off the Frank Pick mind map. South East Trains like to keep it that way with their obtuse and lethargic rail...
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Garden Cities – An English Illusion
The late night Great Northern trains lull me to sleep in my Finsbury Park pied a terre. As I eat my breakfast I watch the packed commuter trains from places like Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City,...
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Brave New World - Stevenage, Hatfield & the future
A town based on a technological future... now there's a planWe all know the script – garden cities are good, new towns are bad. Garden cities look backwards to the security of nostalgia; new towns...
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Three Scandinavian Cities
by Chris MatthewsEven the dead have better welfare – SkogskyrkogårdenA social democratic get-away-from-it-all. Stockholm and Copenhagen were on the itinerary but Malmö was the happy accident. The...
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