I started this blog to answer a question:
How do I live my best life in the world’s greatest city during this climate emergency?
I want actionable answers. They are unlikely to be simple. They will involved a mixture of policy and infrastructure ambitions, in behavioural changes for me and others and views about the built environments, in air quality monitors and building regulations. I know little about most of these topics. To help me learn, I am producing two reports regular:
What I have learnt, so far - what are the emerging answers to that organising question?
Production update - how have I got to those answers?
This is the latter.
Go again?
In January, I committed to reviewing this blog after three months. My questions were straightforward:
Is this the best way to answer my question?
Am I enjoying writing this blog?
The answer, on both counts, is yes.
Writing continues to serve as a discipline — clarifying my thoughts, enforcing rigour. Publishing imposes additional demands: specificity, accuracy, and a higher bar for coherence.
Some of the things I need to change going forward include:
Accepting progress will be slower than I had hoped. A six-month horizon is more realistic for establishing the foundational information.
I have a tendency to over-edit. Two iterations are often sufficient; going beyond that may reduce impact and slow output unnecessarily. A shift to quicker publication should allow a faster build-up of the core content
Substack Notes will return soon. I am clearer about their role. My motivations for publishing are much clearer
News - Notes allow me to reflect important news in a timely way. My comments can always follow later
Content - They allow me to reflect my wider learning quickly and easily. For example the Manchester successes were a useful reminder for when I am creating my manifesto.
Promotional - I want to engage with other thinkers and doers in this space. One of the ways of finding them is to publicise my work. Substack is a rich community of like-minded people so a good place to start that search ahead of a wider social media launch, which I am now delaying until the summer.
The launch of video content will also be delayed until June in order to provide more time to build up the core content.
I want to better reflect the joy I experience living and working in Barnes and Mortlake. Life here is good. I want to make it better, in the widest sense.
Other production lessons from the last month
Process and Tools
My creative routine is sufficiently structured now. I work on three to four stories concurrently. My toolset is now largely fixed. Two recent additions:
ChatGPT (Deep Research): High-value, low-frequency use. Prompts are detailed and require precision
NotebookLM: Particularly effective for thematic curation and querying across multiple sources. The mindmapping tool has been valuable. I have yet to explore all available features, notably audio and expanded search capabilities.
More settled writing schedule
I dedicate 10-15 hours each week on the blog. But I think that time could be more satisfying and productive. I am testing a revised diary for the next month, prioritising consistent morning blocks to improve both focus and flow.
Observations from the US
Three weeks in Dallas offered an unexpected insight. Exposure to a car-dependent urban model helped sharpen my perspective on Barnes and Mortlake. A comparative piece — London versus Dallas — is in the pipeline
Photography
I enjoyed my first dedicated morning taking photographs to add to my stock of images about the area. Substack demands an image for every story. This is not something I have had to think about before so the library was too thin.
Organising Content
I’ve formalised two tools for internal use. Both help me understand potential coverage gaps:
Story Log: Notably absent are expert voices which I am expecting to feature in the summer
Topic List: This talks to scale of this project. There is potential to use this as a navigational aid for readers, subject to Substack’s capabilities.
Domain fixed
The domain — bridged2050.com — is now live, thanks to the help of a friend and former colleague. So satisfying to type bridged2050.com into a browser and be taken straight to my blog.
Social media
I have finally sorted my social media presence on these three platforms
X.com
BlueSky
YouTube
I am passive on all three at the moment.
Glimpse of the future
There are two stories in the last fortnight which gave me more pleasure than the others. Silvertown and Ponder. I could not have written either without the previous 50 stories. They were my informed opinion. They added to what I had learn from others. The insight mattered to me. Small steps. More soon, hopefully.
Niggles
So much is going well but there are three things worth calling out at this stage:
Wrong target area
In my last Production Update, I highlighted the need for putting a boundary round the physical focus for my thinking. I identified an area I called the Barnes Triangle. I think that was the wrong area. I will post an update shortly explaining why and how I want to change it.
Story mix
There is so much going on across such a wide range of topics I am struggling to find the right mix between types of stories. I want a blend of news, commentary and original research. The diary restructure should help, as will the decision to defer feature rollouts.
American influece
My feeds — and the urbanist discourse I follow — remain dominated by U.S. voices. America is so different in so many ways, their value is limited. While I’ve discovered several UK-based commentators, their relative scarcity is notable.
Looking ahead
I am a still a beginner on the topics covered by this blog. So the heavy lifting continues creating that factual foundation. The main focus will be producing more of these foundational stories. Topics I plan to cover include:
Road pricing
SUVs
Early thinking on specific answers to my question.
June’s launch of a dedicated YouTube channel means I have more time to create the curated lists. I can also spend longer preparing for my first video interviews. I have selected my preferred hardware and software.
Finally, with the Notes flowing in Substack and the domain simplifying navigation across the internet, the blog feels more open to others.