Alfas, images, bicycles and sustainable communities?

Well it's not easy justifying the eclectic nature of this collection of blogs, but here goes.

• First up, I got into books and art at a young age. I think everyone is into self-education and art as kids - we want to paint and draw, and we want to know stuff. I just never lost that urge. I just changed it a little as I grew up, earned money and bought cameras and computers
• But it was hard work walking or busing around, so I got into bikes. I remain addicted to bikes and bike racing, and to getting around my neck of the woods with the least impact on my environment as I can muster.
• However it was increasingly difficult lugging my cameras around on the bike, so I got into cars. Not just any old cars, they had to be small, nimble, economic, stylish and... Italian? Well, I've varied from that theme a little in that I've shared my garage with Japanese and Korean as well as other non-Italian makes of automobile. But I remain committed to small footprint cars, even if they may be verging on the impractical at times.
• Sustainable communities? Well I don't like big shopping malls. Never have. Sure the first ones were impressive in a big, collective sort of way, but it soon dawned on me that the characterful villages within our cities - the communities within our communities - were being destroyed by malls. Simply, malls are built on cheap land, and cheap land is either rural or far from infrastructure, like railways. So we become committed to using cars to shop. We lose our local shops services and get centralised "bargain" shops and big, cold meeting places instead. Great for lowering costs per unit sold, bad for our lives
• Bad for our lives? The car-domination is great for personal freedom, but has led to communities cut in two by busy roads too wide to cross. Roads that kids can't safely play on. Roads we don't want to walk alongside or ride our bikes on. We have piled on the pounds because we don't exercise and live fearful, isolated lives because our suburban streets are now almost empty of pedestrian traffic
• I could go on, but the essence of it all is restoring a balance to our communities... by all means capturing the economic value in centralised, higher-volume production and consumption whilst simulataneously reducing the waste and over-consumption; and setting about rebuilding some of the 'people-friendly' village community that we have lost. Before oil prices force us to do it anyway!