It wasn't such a great ride today though the Thames Estuary - or what I used to call the Thames Gateway. The low lying land means you're not that close to the water and the drivers in Kent and Essex are a hell of a lot more aggressive than those on the south coast. The Strava route took me on a mix of busy roads and quieter lanes. The landscape in these parts is generally  gritty and flat; big logistics sheds, power lines and industrial structures  dominate the low horizon.  

There were still quite strong headwinds as I left Eastbourne, passing  a couple of designer beach huts commissioned by Eastbourne Borough Council as part of a programme to boost visitor numbers. The designs were nice enough but nobody seemed to be maintaining them, which rather spoilt the intended effect.

​Background
I had a few rides planned before lockdown. Right now I should have been cycling across Tanzania raising money for the architects’ charity Article 25. But that got cancelled because of the pandemic. I had a plan to bike the length of New Zealand one day.

A couple of months ago I went on a fascinating architectural journey. It started in Hyderabad in south India where I was speaking to the Indian Green Building Council’s annual conference. Hyderabad is one of the few major cities not occupied by the British so the buildings reflect the culture of the Persian rulers of the 16th and 17th century and the styles of the Nizams of Hyderabad who took over from the 18th. The conference was buzzing and full of enthusiasm to respond to the issues raised in the UN Climate Change Summit which had taken place the week before. ‘Greta’ was probably the most used reference thought the two days I was there. But there was another conversation: concerns about Indian Governments plans which would have a major impact on the central vista of Lutyens’ government complex in New Delhi. My host Srini Murthy, chair of the Architecture and Design Foundation, penned a letter of polite protest to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. By happy coincidence I was due to attend the Lutyens Trust Banquet at the RIBA the following week. The event marked the 150th anniversary of the maestro’s  birth, the 75th anniversary of his death and the centenary of the cenotaph.​

Medellin is a fascinating city. It sits in a valley with a river running, north south, down the middle. Large areas of the surrounding mountains are covered with precarious slum housing similar to the favelas of Brazil or barriadas of Peru. The traffic is terrible and there are plans to restrict cars by permitting access to odd number plates one day and even the next. It has an excellent metro system that largely runs parallel to the river and stations are linked to the four lines of spectacular Metrocable cars that span the city.  The cable cars allow a transport system to be threaded into the dense slum areas with minimal disruption and efficiently traverse the steep inclines. Bus stops and cycle share are located at metro stations, providing a satisfyingly integrated system. E​​very Sunday and public holidays there is a cyclovia around Avenida Poblado between 7am and 1pm. I was told there are some 100km of cycleways in the city (a link to them can be found here) and so I decided to investigate.
I started at the Botanical Gardens and followed a route going south. Crossings are linked to pedestrian movement rather than vehicular and marked in red - so you cross when the peds do.

​How do we make new pieces of city? How do we deal with contentious issues of density, height and characterisation? In the context of the current debate about beauty and the built environment, kicked off by James Brokenshire’s Commission “to champion beautiful buildings as an integral part of the drive to build the homes communities”, a recent visit to the Middle East raised some interesting issues.