All articles by Charlie Lawrence Jones
Charlie Lawrence Jones
Infrastructure populism: on the politics of building big, or failing to
It is famously said of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini that at least while he was dragging his country into a…
The 1920s plan that’s weirder than any of Boris Johnsons’: draining the Mediterranean Sea
Long before Boris Johnson was advocating a Channel Bridge, and various other pointless infrastructure projects, there was the Atlantropa project…
When a dockless rent-a-bike winds up in a canal, whose job is it to fish it out?
The east London borough of Newham boasts the largest tidal mill in the world. The Three Mills’ buildings, which were…
A brief history, and the murky future, of Britain’s almshouses
On a slightly meandering walk through south London, I was surprised to stumble across a row of almshouses. I thought…
Boris Johnson wants a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland. But he’s not the first to suggest it.
It wouldn’t be a Boris Johnson political intervention if it didn’t involve a massive and ultimately highly unlikely bridge. As…
Four things we learned about the UK’s waterways from Chris Clegg’s Canal Time Map
In my ever-present efforts to satisfy the cartography-minded readers among you – i.e. all of you – I stumbled across…
How shipping containers changed the world – and your day-to-day life
Shipping containers, it almost goes without saying, do not make good conversation starters. Bring them up at parties and you’ll…
Africa’s Great Green Wall: 8,000km of trees that could save millions of lives
If Boris Johnson cared for much outside of Westminster, he would probably love Africa’s Great Green Wall initiative. As a…
Bothies: The abandoned huts that’ll make the ideal post-Brexit holiday home in the Scottish Highlands
It would be unlikely for you to find a bothy unless you already knew it was there. Scattered across the…
Developers shouldn’t just treat canals as an aesthetic bonus. It’s time to use waterways for construction again
While London’s canals have seen a great resurgence in the last forty years, they’ve also witnessed a drastic move away…