Potholes and Pavements
Autor Laura Lakeren Limba Engleză Paperback – 9 mai 2024
Laura Laker nu este doar un nume de referință în jurnalismul sportiv britanic, ci o voce critică și pasionată care a documentat transformările urbane în publicații precum The Guardian sau Sunday Times. Co-gazdă a popularului podcast Streets Ahead, Laker își folosește experiența de decenii pentru a analiza infrastructura de transport alternativ, transformând o investigație jurnalistică într-o odisee personală și politică. În Potholes and Pavements, ea pleacă pe urmele idealiștilor din anii '70 care au visat la o rețea națională de piste de biciclete, explorând acum realitatea celor 13.000 de mile care compun National Cycle Network.
Remarcăm modul în care autoarea împletește jurnalul de călătorie cu analiza socio-politică. Cartea nu este doar o înșiruire de peisaje din Cornwall sau Cairngorms, ci o privire onestă asupra barierelor administrative și a finanțărilor precare care fac ca anumite segmente să fie, după cum recunoaște chiar directorul rețelei, „inadecvate”. Pe aceeași linie cu Britain by Bike de Jane Eastoe, acest volum celebrează frumusețea traseelor britanice, dar se diferențiază printr-un accent mult mai pregnant pe realitatea tehnică și politică a infrastructurii, depășind sfera nostalgiei pentru a cere schimbare.
Subliniem structura narativă care ghidează cititorul prin 22 de capitole, de la geneza rețelei în Bristol până la întâlniri cu campioni precum Chris Boardman. Ritmul este alert, alternând momente de camaraderie pe traseu cu reflecții profunde despre cum ciclismul poate combate criza climatică și îmbunătăți sănătatea publică. Este o scriere care a fost pe bună dreptate recunoscută prin nominalizarea la premiul Vicki Orvice, oferind o perspectivă feminină rară și necesară în literatura de profil.
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Specificații
ISBN-10: 1399406469
Pagini: 304
Dimensiuni: 152 x 232 x 26 mm
Greutate: 0.38 kg
Editura: Bloomsbury Publishing
Locul publicării:London, United Kingdom
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Recomandăm această carte oricărui pasionat de mobilitate urbană sau cicloturism care dorește să înțeleagă ce se află dincolo de asfalt. Cititorul câștigă o perspectivă avizată asupra modului în care politicile publice influențează experiența pe două roți. Este o lectură esențială pentru cei care vor să vadă cum un ideal din anii '70 poate fi reparat și adaptat nevoilor moderne de sustenabilitate și sănătate.
Descriere
'Just wonderful - two wheels good, Laura Laker brilliant. Part travel diary, part love poem to Britain's cycle network ... it's difficult not to be inspired by this fabulous book.' Jeremy Vine
A unique journey around the UK's National Cycle Network and one journalist's quest to investigate the state of our country's cycling.
What if we were less reliant on our cars? What if there were safe cycling paths to take us places instead? What if those paths led to the next town, the next village and the countryside beyond?
This was the dream of a group of Bristolian idealists in the 1970s when they founded Britain's National Cycle Network, which now runs to nearly 13,000 miles across the country. Journalist Laura Laker sets off on an odyssey around the UK to see where the NCN began, and where it is now.
What has gone right - and wrong - with this piece of national infrastructure? Why is it run by a charity whose CEO once admitted 'we've had enough of it being crap, we need to fix it'? Laura lifts the lid on this maddening, patchy, and at times dangerous network, and the similarly precarious politics and financing that make it what it is.
She discovers beauty, friendship and adventure along the way, from the Cairngorms to Cornwall, from the Pennines to the South Wales coast. On her mission to pin down what the NCN is and what it means to those who use it, she also meets up with high-profile travelling companions, including Chris Boardman and Ned Boulting.
In a country where 71% of trips are less than five miles, two thirds of Britons say they want to cycle more and doing so could help our climate, health and wellbeing. Laura is on a mission to see if we can make that dream a reality.
Cuprins
1. Falling out
2. Founding a network
3. Friendship and wayfinding on the Thames Path and Beyond
4. Back to the beginning on the Bristol and Bath Railway Path
5. Maps, a murderer and mud on the Kent and Sussex coasts
6. Millennium miles, moss and an omerta
7. Crime and accidental punishment on the Isle of Wight
8. Cycling across Cornwall with a shrub
9. Camel walk
10. Laker Close, and a reunion of sorts, in Somerset
11. Progress and flipping Boris the bird
12. Chris Boardman, Chester and the 'least shit option'
13. Gung-ho hand-cycling
14. The mystery of the Coalash Triangle
15. Thank goodness for Wales
16. Laker in the Lakes
17. Caledonian people power
18. The dream team
19. Ned Boulting on helmets and a helter-skelter of history
20. This path goes all the way to Liverpool
21. Going full circle
22. They take us because we need to go
Coda
Appendix: The founders of a network
References
Acknowledgements
Recenzii
With a passion for both cycling and words, there are few more qualified to paint a picture of the NCN's potential than Laura Laker.
Laker lays a finger on the nation's cycling pulse, and finds, despite it all, there is a lot of life. A beautiful homage to a wonky network.
An essential read for all cycling enthusiasts. I loved hearing about Laura's experiences . a wonderful reminder of how cycling both in cities and in the countryside can change our nation's health and happiness for the better ... Laura has a broad vision for the future of cycling in our country as well as practical suggestions of the steps we need to take to get there.
In a pedal-powered journey of discovery, Laura Laker tells the surprising story of how Britain got its bike paths: the good, the bad and the downright ugly. Along the way she meets the early visionaries and today's activists engaged in what's become an unlikely new front in the culture wars.
...an awesome ride around the byways and backroads of the UK.a really thoughtful piece of writing.Laura is an amazing writer.
An absorbing, and often surprising portrait of Britain's cycleways, a call to arms for active travel - and a compelling history of the greatest national institution you've never heard of.
Part travelogue, part history and part love story for cycling, Laura's exploration of the National Cycle Network on her pink e-bike is an engaging tour of Britain's erratic relationship with cycling. She beautifully illustrates why sustained funding and governmental leadership is urgently needed to transform these often-ignored routes into the national treasure we deserve.
Really eye-opening and instructive
Entertaining and informative read that brings focus to some infrastructure that could be of even more benefit to society than it is - given the chance.
A charming look at the literal highs and lows of Britain's occasionally ramshackle, occasionally incredible national cycling network.
Potholes and Pavements is the story of the UK's fitful, sometimes painful transformation from a car-dependent nation of villages, towns and cities into a connected, bikeable network of communities. Through the people, places and power struggles that produced today's National Cycle Network, Laker reveals the social, health, environmental and economic possibilities that cycling offers a nation, and shows that the road ahead is actually a bike lane.
The most important cycling book in the UK ... Laker manages to eloquently, and accurately, paint a warts-and-all picture of the National Cycle Network ... essential reading for every cyclist in the UK, and especially essential reading for all road engineers, and all politicians
. this book goes a long way to answering our cries of despair and delight - why the NCN is simultaneously so hopeless and so brilliant . Laker has had plenty of time and inspiration to pull informed thoughts and observation together
The book explores the high and lows of the UK's cycle infrastructure, from much-loved off-road links featuring sculptures, to bumpy rides that see [Laura] navigating the potholes and pavement of the title along with stretches of intimidating roads and muddy fields in the middle of nowhere
A great book
[one of] the urbanism books you should plan to read - Monocle.com