There were more than 1,100 people at the Hackney Empire last night to see the film The Human Scale by Andreas M. Dalsgaard about how cities can change for the better. It focusses to a great extent on the work of Jan Gehl who designed the original Copenhagen masterplan which has turned the Danish capital […]

Just attended a very good meeting organised by Friends of the Earth on clean air. This issue is a real scandal - things are almost as bad as during the days of the 1950s smog, but just because today’s pollution is less visible - though one slide showed the brown of nitrous oxide very clearly […]

It is great that one of the speakers at my Labour party fringe meeting on Tuesday 24th (Old Ship Hotel, 6pm - 8 pm) is going to be Simon Birkett who, almost singlehandedly, has raised the issue of clean air in London. It is an issue that actually people care about a lot and has […]

The figures obtained by the Clean Air Campaign ( http://cleanairinlondon.org/sources/carcinogenic-diesel-exhaust-disclosed-for-every-significant-road-in-london/ ) are more than simply shocking. They are scandalous, especially given the wholly inadequate response of the mayor. They show what we knew already - that there is only one response to the poor air quality in Britain’s premier shopping street, Oxford Street,and that is […]