
The grid system for London that never happened - sambeau
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35418272
======
liotier
> "A series of public squares, and in the middle of each one a church and
> churchyard. It can be extended over and over again - it's a perfect grid
> plan"

Wow - I have been extensively mapping Senegal on Openstreetmap and this is a
typical pattern there - only with mosque !

~~~
joshwd
What brings you to Senegal? I did notice over the past few years that OSM
improved significantly in Dakar, although I didn't get to contribute much.

~~~
liotier
I just like Senegal and I have quite a few Senegalese friends in Paris. My
Openstreetmap activity there started with cycling there with no usable maps at
all in 2008... Some time after coming back I discovered OSM and began making
the maps I would have liked to have - also it was a way to remain connected to
Senegal. A few years later, with almost 400k changes in 750 commits, Senegal
has turned into the main nexus of my mapping activity and I'm now in touch
with some of the local mappers. Open JOSM and look at the changelog of just
about every object in the Dakar region and you'll likely find my name in half
of them !

I'll be in Dakar at the end of the month by the way, for a couple of week with
four of my daughters and I intend to join some OSM meetups there.

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radarsat1
> But Charles II was not keen. He had Knight arrested for suggesting that the
> king might benefit financially from such a calamity.

..aaand this kind of thing reminds me why democracy, for all its
imperfections, ain't so bad...

~~~
elthran
Counter point, from the wiki article on Charles 2

>Charles attempted to introduce religious freedom for Catholics and Protestant
dissenters with his 1672 Royal Declaration of Indulgence, but the English
Parliament forced him to withdraw it

If you want examples of monarchy being worse than democracy, you certainly
have plenty of examples with the 2 Charles (There wasn't a civil war for no
reason), but there are plenty of examples of democracy being worse than an
autocratic system

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I wouldn't say the Parliament of the 1600s was very democratic.

~~~
notahacker
But to be fair, if it was more democratic it would have been even more
reflexively anti-Catholic at the time...

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danans
The future-looking photos of the architecturally designed floating houses in
Nigeria (bottom of the page) are really interesting.

I imagine that people build floating shantytowns because there is no where
else to live, not because they prefer to live on water.

But given those constraints it's neat to think about what engineering and
design can do to improve the housing available in those circumstances.

~~~
cpeterso
The floating houses remind me of China Miéville's novel _The Scar_ , with a
floating movable city constructed from thousands of ships lashed together.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scar)

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legulere
"All images subject to copyright."

You shouldn't be allowed to claim copyright for works in the public domain.

~~~
samwillis
I believe in the UK you can hold the copyright to the scan/photo of an artwork
or image that is out of copyright. So the digital versions of these images are
relatively new and the copywrite would be held by the person making the copy.

~~~
yitchelle
That is an interesting concept. So is it possible to create multiple
copyrighted versions of an artwork or image that is out of copyright?

~~~
lmm
It's possible to create multiple derivative works of an out-of-copyright work,
each of which will carry its own copyright. E.g. modern Sherlock Holmes
stories. The question that matters is whether the scan involved enough
creative work to qualify for copyright in its own right; as the sibling says,
a simple scan won't, but a thorough restoration might.

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dvirsky
What amazes me is how small London was then compared to the huge thing it is
today. What constituted "London" in Wren's plan is like a small bit of one
part of the city today. I mean, it makes sense when you think about it, but it
was just surprising to see it visualized.

~~~
jeffwass
London itself, as in the City of London, is still only a square mile, it's
even called 'The Square Mile'. And the City of London is more-or-less based on
the borders of the old Roman city of Londinium. Parts of the Roman city walls
are still around today.

Greater London is an amalgamation of the neighbouring boroughs that grew and
merged into the London metropolis today. Eg, Westminster, Kensington and
Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham, Camden, etc.

You can see which borough you're in by looking at the street signs.

~~~
orf
Funnily enough Westminster is it's own city as well, so London consists of 3
cities really.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Westminster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Westminster)

~~~
jeffwass
Greater London consists of many boroughs or 'cities', way more than three.
Each is its own municipality, just like Westminster.

The City of London happens to be one of the smallest, and least populous.

Edit - on rereading this, I realise you may have been referring to the fact
that Westminister has 'City' in its name, whereas most others boroughs use the
word 'Borough'. I'm not aware of other boroughs in Greater London that are
also 'Cities' in that respect.

~~~
quarterto
By _far_ the least populous. In the 2011 census it had a population of 7375.

~~~
darkr
Also interesting, those people live only within 4 electoral wards, whereas
there are 25 total electoral wards within the City.

Within the remaining 21 electoral wards, votes are controlled by businesses
(mostly banks and the like), and the amount of votes that each business
receives depends on it's size.

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jdpedrie
A similar thing happened in Detroit, after the fire of 1805. Augustus Woodward
designed a plan for the city which was partially implemented, especially in
the large avenues leading out of the city center. [1]

[1] [http://www.metrotimes.com/Blogs/archives/2015/06/01/the-
detr...](http://www.metrotimes.com/Blogs/archives/2015/06/01/the-detroit-that-
never-was-how-the-woodward-plan-died-197-years-ago)

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disordinary
Surprised they don't have anything about the rebuilding of Christchurch. 45%
of the CBD was destroyed and the rebuild is interesting.

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cylinder
If you are interested in grids / city planning check out the new book "City on
a Grid" about NYC.

