The media landscape catering to (trail, mountain and ultra)running afficionados has changed quite dramatically since I entered it in the late 90s. The number, diversity and availability of running docs, currently a veritable tsunami of new additions accessible through youtube or vimeo, is one of the more noticeable. Continue reading
A good route is not enough for urban exploration. It’s a good start but without an exploration mindset you’ll have trouble connecting with and immersing yourself in the cityscape. Continue reading
Singapore’s reluctance to really say goodbye to a car-centric planning vision is lamentable, but there is more to its vision than just that. Some of it appeals to me tremedously, some bothers me, some seems really counterproductive. Continue reading
City infrastructures are a pretty determining way in which their history makes for lots of what sociologists like to call ‘path dependent’ consequences. Once you’ve build your expressway it is not so easy, to use a strong understatement, to reconnect the two sides of the city that this expressway divides it into. Continue reading
If you’re really interested in a particular environment, be it a spectacular mountainscape, a beautiful forest, a heritage-rich inner city, you name it, enjoy being part of it, want to connect with it to the max, why would you want to run it? Seems a pretty fundamental question to my ‘project’ of promoting running as a way to explore landscapes/cityscapes.
A mash of two posts on my previous blog.
Some art finds, all about colour, as different as they come, and still to me intimately connected through their cityscape focus.
The first shows what a bit a colour can do to a Mexican slum:
It is quite amazing to see what difference connecting interesting bits of townscape to each other makes to their use. Shanghai made me very aware of that. During my four years in this metropolis the city added dozens of kilometers to its landscaped, fully pedestrianized and connected by one unimpeded cyclepath Huangpu riverfront. When I arrivedelement and started exploring the city on the run I was amazed by what felt like a curious underuse of the various bits of pedestrianized riverfront other than its major tourist attraction, the Bund. How come that all these obvious and easily accessible escapes from the surrounding hectic urban mayhem did not attract more people? Continue reading
In short: anything sorta runnable that shows you the amazing diversity of Singapore’s cityscape, that is enjoyable, that allows you to connect with your environment, that is allows you to keep moving, that has one or more options for lengthening, that passes one or more interesting sights that make for possible stops for more in-depth exploration, that includes any nearby green area, that has options for toilet and cheap food & drink stops, that avoids trafficked roads wherever possible, that includes hills, stairs, trails and other off-road possibilities wherever possible. Continue reading
Singapore has some superb online map resources. Mining them for whatever they are worth greatly helps exploring the city, its urban treasures as well as its off-road trails, but still leave out much that a pedestrian would want. The perfect doesn’t exist, I know, and striving for it often hides the good enough from view. Let me describe my thoughts and wishes about ‘perfect’. Who knows, it may trigger someone out there to translate them into something good enough. Continue reading
Runners in Singapore do pretty crazy stuff to get their altitude meters in. Be it for general training, be it in preparation for a particular race with lots of positive and negative altitude (and those are on the rise). Continue reading
Pedestrian Singapore 