Bicycle diaries -

In the staff room at work we have book shelves where people put books they have read, don't want to keep but think others might like to read. Had some photocopying to do and had left the book I was reading at home so went to have a look and chose "Bicycle Diaries" by David Byrne. As a musician and artist he travels a lot for his work and started riding a bicycle round the cities he was visiting. "This point of view - faster than a walk, slower than a train, often slightly higher than a person - became my window on the world over the last thirty years - and it still is. It's a big window and it looks out on a mainly urban landscape....Through this window I catch glimpses of the mind of my fellow man, as expressed in the cities he lives in. Cities, it occured to me, are physical manifestations of our deepest beliefs, and our often unconscious thoughts, not so much as individuals, but as the social animinals we are. A cognitive scientist need only look at what we have made - the hives we have created - to know what we think and what we believe to be important, as well as how we structure those thoughts and beliefs....you don't need CAT scans and cultural anthropologists to show you what's going on inside the human mind; its inner workings are manifested in three dimensions all around us. Our values and hopes are sometimes awfully embarrasingly easy to read. They're right there - in the store fronts, museums, temples, shops and office buildings and in how these strcutures interrelate, or sometimes don't. They say, in their unique visual language, "This is what we think matters, this is how we live and how we play."..... I am only half way through the book, and haven't got to the chapter on London yet, I am now thinking how British cities might change if green thinking/living really took off. Road layouts would be designed for cycles and pedestrians. More local shops. But I am a bit stuck as to what else. But I will try to think, as it is easier to get the future you want if you can visualise it first!