There were 10km/hr speed limits and vehicles mostly not going much faster than that, with the layout -- the street furniture and the people wandering everywhere -- helping to keep speeds down.

These are laid out as single surfaces with no kerbs and a lot of street furniture scattered around, a bit like a giant woonerf.

But what about the superblocks? My second thread on walking in Barcelona's Eixample, looking at recent pedestrianisation schemes.

(The extra space at the corners is mostly used for car parking, though in a few places it has been reallocated for cafe seating, cycle parking, or other uses.)

Barcelona footways are also flat and don't suffer from "street scars" or other damage that creates trip hazards. (One exception to this are tree beds, which often have a considerable drop from the footway level, perhaps to assist with catching rainwater.)

(Barcelona's "old city" streets are much like those of any other medieval city core, though they are really nicely laid out and mostly fully pedestrianised - certainly more attractive than Oxford's.)

At the Hemisfèric in Valencia. Everything in the small gift shop is the kind of stuff you’d expect. And then there are three copies of Mandelbrot’s _The Fractal Geometry of Nature_! (At €26, also the only thing not overpriced.) dannyreviews.com/h/Fractal_Ge...

Most of the SRETs are much narrower, e.g. 6.5m here (Linton Rd).

You can see where the old kerb lines were on this.

Parasites: The Inside Story dannyreviews.com/h/Parasites.... - worms you don't want to meet

Capitalists Must Starve (Park Seolyeon) dannyreviews.com/h/Capitalist... - a straightforward biographical novel set in Korea in the 1920s, telling the story of labour organiser and activist Kang Juryong.

The Five Million Year Odyssey: The Human Journey From Ape to Agriculture dannyreviews.com/h/Five_Milli... (my review)

If you need to escape…

I think walking beats them all, and cycling can move more people than buses (though only a few places does that actually happen)

_Four Colors Suffice_ is a history of the Four Colour Map Problem, from its origins in 1852 down to its proof in 1976. Along the way it develops enough of the mathematics to give a broad understanding of how the proof works. dannyreviews.com/h/Four_Color... (my review) @princetonupress.bsky.social

Someone reports: these racks are fully uses and there are still a dozen cycles attached to nearby street furniture. This suggests to me that three car parking spaces should have been converted to cycle parking, not just one.

Apparently removing even one of the two dozen car parking places in front of the shops will cripple the local businesses.

Go Paris!

_How to Drive a Nuclear Reactor_ dannyreviews.com/h/How_Drive_... (my review)

_Children of Mars: The Origins of Rome's Empire_ (Armstrong, @oxfordunipress.bsky.social ) dannyreviews.com/h/Children_M... (my review) - "The Roman Republic was a federation of elite families who worked together for mutual benefit, but in a highly competitive environment"

Richard Davis' _Religions of Early India: A Cultural History_ (@princetonupress.bsky.social) offers a nice combination of broad themes and illustrative details, in their social and political contexts. dannyreviews.com/h/Religions_... (my review)

_Great Fear on the Mountain_ - a novel of an Alpine village and the mountain above it dannyreviews.com/h/Great_Fear... (my review)

"All the measures described are based on the premise that a balanced provision must achieve a better environment for the whole of the City, by the reduction of the number of vehicles which require to use the City's road network. ..."

The challenges in defining "religion" aeon.co/essays/the-w... (Aeon) dannyreviews.com/h/Before_Rel... (my review of Nongbri's _Before Religion_)

Oxford City Council's 1973 Balanced Transport Policy. wanderingdanny.com/oxford/docs/... This was hugely progressive, abandoning road building and looking to shift trips to public transport and cycling instead.

London's most dangerous junction for cycling has had thirty injuries in the last five years. Oxford's Plain roundabout has had forty injuries in that time.

Bike City Amsterdam: How Amsterdam Became the Cycling Capital of the World dannyreviews.com/h/Bike_City_... (my review) - "the interaction of the city's geography, planning and politics with its cycling culture, people, and infrastructure"

A History of Wales in Twelve Poems - short historical essays accompanied by poems dannyreviews.com/h/History_Wa... (my review)

Europe's Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War dannyreviews.com/h/Europes_Tr... (my review) - "a long and involved, but rewarding, account of one of the most traumatic periods in European history"