Global sport in the suburbs: the Regent Street Polytechnic’s sports facilities at Chiswick, 1888–1938

This article shows how the elite origins and religious mission of the Regent Street Polytechnic encouraged participation in amateur sport in London, and promoted the suburb of Chiswick as a global context for competitive sports. From the 1880s to the outbreak of World War 2, the Polytechnic and its facilities forged synergies between the city centre and the burgeoning suburbs in London, engendering a city-wide culture of amateur sports, and embedding the Polytechnic into a global network of athletes. Suburbs are typically presented by writers as being ‘on the edge’ of metropolitan life, but such perspectives are wrong. The West London suburb of Chiswick was the home of Polytechnic facilities that provided a dynamic context for the internationalization and modernization of sport in the capital.

Evaluating the use of an urban consolidation centre and electric vehicles in central London

The paper focuses on the role that can be played by urban consolidation centres (UCCs) in reducing freight traffic and its environmental impacts in towns and cities. It is based on the before and after evaluation of a trial led by a major stationery and office supplies company in which urban freight deliveries in central London made from a depot in the suburbs using diesel vehicles were replaced with the use of an urban micro-consolidation centre located in the delivery area together with the use of electrically-assisted cargo tricycles and electric vans. The results show that the total distance travelled and the CO2eq emissions per parcel delivered fell by 20% and 54% respectively as a result of this delivery system. However, the evaluation has also indicated that the distance travelled per parcel rose substantially in the City of London delivery area as a result of the electric vehicles having far smaller load limits in both weight and volume compared with diesel vans. But, at the same time, the trial system was able to virtually eliminate CO2eq emissions per parcel delivered in the City of London. The trial proved successful from the company's perspective in transport, environmental and financial terms. The company therefore decided to continue the operation beyond the end of the trial with it being officially launched during 2010.

The new suburban history, New Urbanism and the spaces in between

A review article of three recent books on suburbanization and suburbia in the USA: Andrew Friedman, Covert Capital: Landscapes of Denial and the Making of the US Empire in the Suburbs of Northern Virginia. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013. 416pp. £19.95 pbk. Elaine Lewinnek, The Working Man's Reward: Chicago's Early Suburbs and the Roots of American Sprawl. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 239pp. 20 b&w illustrations. £30.99 hbk. Benjamin Ross, Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 249pp. £20.99 hbk.