There’s nowhere I’ve felt this more extremely than in Rotterdam. I expected it to be the same kind of European city as most, with lots of little museums with little medieval things (which, don’t get me wrong, I do love visiting!), and it had this intense “industry is NOW” feeling instead. Like. completely unironic “concrete is good actually”. Such a breath of fresh air to feel like we can actually build new things, not just rely on the infrastructure left to us by some kind of bygone ancient people.
My daughter and family used to live in Blyth my youngest grandson was born at Ashingington, we've eaten Ice cream with sand blown onto it at Newbiggen on Sea on a summers day and witnessed life imitating sayings, not quite coals to Newcastle but a near miss, coals to Blyth, as well as a ship in the harbour unloading bauxite, there was another unloading coal
This is a beautiful quote. I love the way Richard Smyth writes, he is a real talent.
Zurich has a lot of this, ancient factories and buildings, but they repurpose them all.
There’s nowhere I’ve felt this more extremely than in Rotterdam. I expected it to be the same kind of European city as most, with lots of little museums with little medieval things (which, don’t get me wrong, I do love visiting!), and it had this intense “industry is NOW” feeling instead. Like. completely unironic “concrete is good actually”. Such a breath of fresh air to feel like we can actually build new things, not just rely on the infrastructure left to us by some kind of bygone ancient people.
If you haven't read it yet, I think you'll live Deb Chachra's "How Infrastructure Works" which combines a love for charismatic infrastructural megastructures with an informed engineering case for the transition to sustainable energy https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/461276/how-infrastructure-works-by-chachra-deb/9781911709541 An extract here https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/nov/02/beauty-of-infrastructure-electric-mountain-dinorwig-power-station-north-wales
This is amazing!
My daughter and family used to live in Blyth my youngest grandson was born at Ashingington, we've eaten Ice cream with sand blown onto it at Newbiggen on Sea on a summers day and witnessed life imitating sayings, not quite coals to Newcastle but a near miss, coals to Blyth, as well as a ship in the harbour unloading bauxite, there was another unloading coal
Beautifully argued, thank you!
Very good.
Is the coast near Blyth where the final scene of ‘Get Carter’ might have been filmed? Where the coal waste buckets tipped into the sea?
[Liam Neeson voice] Reactivate the Wrekin