Aerial Views of Landscapes Between Malaga and Barcelona...

Some photos, here shown in sequence, of a trip up the Spanish coast from Malaga to Barcelona. The roughly an hour long flight included a remarkable variety of different, both urban and less-urban (I'm cautious of calling them 'wild' along such densely inhabited landscapes) terrains and topographies... In an age when air travel has become pervasive, and in a time when much of our attention is preoccupied with watching a small screen - be this on a smart-phone, Nintendo DS, or the small TV screen in the seat in front of us - it's nice sometimes to have the chance to immerse oneself in quite stunningly salient scenery revealing itself from views a few thousand meters above the ground plane...

Porta Nigra, Trier...

A few, somewhat Piranesiesque, photos of the Porta Nigra in Trier, Germany...

Public Fountain/ Sculpture Outside the RFH on the South Bank, London...

It was lovely to come across this example of benign, catalytic, interactive, spontaneous and joyous (middle-of-the-town) public intervention outside the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank, an area that has been revitalized since its renovation a few years back... As can be observed in the video below, a truly mixed bunch of individuals of all ages were enjoying and making the most the fountain. These kinds of places/ quasi-planned (non-commercial) occasions are vital to a city's or neighborhood's well-being and need to be included into any shared and more public urban interventions...

Below the fountain adjacent to the main walkway a temporary beach was set up,which also was very much enjoyed by the city's inhabitants and visitors...

Acknowledging the importance of comparative urban and public acts, and formulating their own takes of what such acts might entail within the urban context of the various center's of the GCC nations, is crucial if they ever wish to gain a more prominent position on the various Livability Indexes and covet to hobnob with the top metropolitan cities of the world...

The beach adjacent to the walkway...