Austin Williams

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This article is part of the Climate project of Spinwatch.

Austin Williams at an LM network event

Stanley Feldman and Vincent Marks, Global Warming and other Bollocks: the truth about all those science scare stories, 2009, including a chapter by Austin Williams of the LM network

Austin Williams is an architect, organiser and writer associated with the libertarian anti-environmental LM network. In particular, he has written for Living Marxism, led the Future Cities Project, ManTownHuman, Bookshop Barnies and the defunct Transport Research Group, participated in Audacity and in Institute of Ideas events, spoken at the Manchester Salon and the Battle of Ideas, adjudicated for Debating Matters, appeared on WORLDbytes and written for Spiked and Culture Wars.

Austin Williams, Enemies of Progress, 2008. In the Guardian, John Vidal and David Adam wrote "when you see the words 'progress' or 'reason' in a book title, you can bet it has been written by an extreme libertarian arguing for the right to pollute, or an ageing Living Marxism cell member - or both."

Current and Recent Roles

Williams has been a lecturer of Architecture and Urbanism at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China since 2011, since when he has also contributed regularly to The Architectural review as their China correspondent. He has also been the managing editor of the architectural journal 'Masterplanning the Future' (MPTF) since 2013. He is the director and founder of ManTowNHuman (a play on the Manifesto title ‘ManTowNHuman: Man Towards a New Humanism’), which was established in 2010. He has also been an architectural producer for the NBS Learning channels since 2009. A 2007 biographical note states that he was a Visiting Tutor at the Vehicle Design department of theRoyal College of Art. He has been the director of the Future Cities Project since its foundation in 2006 and has also organised the Bookshop Barnies since 2005. He has also appeared at nearing 30 Battle of Ideas events since 2005, on panels often heavily weighted with others with links to the LM Network. He was a writer and illustrator for the ‘Short Cuts guide book series’ from 2005 until 2011. He was a regular contributor to the Times between 2004 and 2013, and contributed articles to a host of publications during this time including BD, Blueprint and the Economist. He co-ordinated the ‘future of’ festivals between 2003-2010, which looked at the future of various societal/architectural issues such as congestion, infrastructure, local vs global, and community. He spoke and wrote for Audacity between 2003 and 2007 and was a regular writer for Spiked between 2002-2010.Between 2000 and 2005 he was the Technical Editor for the Architect’s Journal, for whom he continued to contribute articles until 2013. He also wrote for the Daily Telegraph between 2001 and 2006.

Previous Roles

He was the director of the Transport Research Group from around 1997 until 2005. He wrote for Living Marxism and LM between 1997 and 2000 contributing 4 articles and 5 commentaries. Before this he was an architecture critic for BBC London for two years and was a practising architect between 1987-2000.

Education

Austin Williams was born in South Wales on 24 April 1959 and studied for a BSc Diploma in architecture at what was then known as the ‘Bartlett School of Architecture, Environmental Design, Town Planning and the Built Environment’, but has since been re-branded as ‘The Bartlett’, at University College London.

Views

Climate change sceptic

Williams was the organiser, on behalf of the Future Cities Project, of a panel on climate change at the the Battle of Ideas festival at the London's Royal College of Art, which was organised by the Institute of Ideas. 'Williams, picked the panel, and he's on it too. The first article on Austin's reading list to accompany the debate mocks "climate change doom-mongers". Like the Government's chief scientist, Sir David King perhaps? Williams himself adds a sarcastic self-penned piece reviewing a conference on renewable energy', the Press Gazette reported.

Books: Critic of Sustainability

He is the author of a book attacking advocates of sustainability, The Enemies of Progress: Dangers of sustainability, published in May 2008 and standing in June 2010 at 343,203 in the Amazon.co.uk sales ranking.

In 2009 he had a chapter, 'Unsustainable arguments', in Global Warming and other Bollocks: the truth about all those science scare stories, edited by Stanley Feldman and Vincent Marks. Other authors in the book included Eamonn Butler, director of the Adam Smith Institute.

A promotional description of Williams's book, The Enemies of Progress: Dangers of Sustainability, stated that "this polemical book examines the concept of sustainability and presents a critical exploration of its all-pervasive influence on society, arguing that sustainability, manifested in several guises, represents a pernicious and corrosive doctrine that has survived primarily because there seems to be no alternative to its canon: in effect, its bi-partisan appeal has depressed critical engagement and neutered politics. It is a malign philosophy of misanthropy, low aspirations and restraint. This book argues for a destruction of the mantra of sustainability, removing its unthinking status as orthodoxy, and for the reinstatement of the notions of development, progress, experimentation and ambition in its place." The book features an endorsement by Frank Furedi.

In the Guardian, John Vidal and David Adam wrote that "when you see the words 'progress' or 'reason' in a book title, you can bet it has been written by an extreme libertarian arguing for the right to pollute, or an ageing Living Marxism cell member - or both. So it is with The Enemies of Progress: The Dangers of Sustainability, a book by Austin Williams that argues, very roughly, that planning is bad, all development is good, and sod the lot of you. Judge for yourself how batty it is with this endorsement from former Sunday Telegraph editor Dominic Lawson: 'A much-needed diagnosis of the bleak anti-human pathology described as environmentalism'."

Writing for Living Marxism (1997-2000)

Williams wrote 4 articles and 5 commentaries on UK transport policy, for Living Marxism, between 1997 and 2000. He argues that campaigns to introduce speed limits lack evidence, that speed can actually reduce accidents and that blaming car drivers for accidents shifts the blame from lack of investment in infrastructure:

Blaming speed for accidents presents the road safety issue as an abstract argument about the need for individual restraint, but ignores the very real measures which the authorities need to take to prevent specific dangerous situations arising... massive investment in road infrastructure in the UK is not on the cards. Instead, drivers themselves are blamed for accidents. I think that this is a dangerous evasion

Traffic control an invasion of the private sphere

He also seeks to portray the car as an unfairly maligned vehicle stating 'Car drivers will become the Smokers of the New Millennium, banished to the margins of the city'. In addition he argues that the government seeks to extend this negative viewpoint to all transport in an effort to modify people's behaviour, and that this is against the principles of expansionist endeavour:

When the government launched its long-awaited White Paper 'A new deal for transport' at the end of July, everybody from Friends of the Earth to the Automobile Association agreed in principle that it was a positive step forward...There is a broad acceptance of the prejudices which underpin the proposals - specifically the prejudice against the motor car. The need to reduce reliance on the private car is the unquestioned assumption that runs through the whole document... instead of simple anti-car policies, we now have a fully-fledged anti-transport policy...At root the debate is not about transport policy at all, but about social policy. It is about encouraging responsible citizenry through the medium of transport. Britain's roads are in crisis, we are told, and in partnership with New Labour we can all lend a hand...It seems the purpose of transport policy into the next century should be to create a situation where people don't travel outside their own parochial boundaries, if at all. This is the biggest indictment of transport policy at the end of the millennium; a policy that encourages parish-pump values instead of broadening horizons, celebrates physical exertion over engineering, and tells us not to travel at all unless absolutely un-avoidable

Environmentalist elite capture

Elsewhere he seems to suggest that a successful anti-car lobbying industry has promoted formally extremist actions into legitimacy:

A decade ago, police arrested a group of guilla transport activists for painting a cycle path on the road in Fulham. Going out at dead of night, with paint-spraying equipment 'borrowed' from the council, they completed a short stretch of cycle lane before returning the paint sprayer in the morning. How times have changed - today, cycle lanes are painted on by council employees in broad daylight. From the heyday of Swampy and the battle for Newbury, we have now arrived at a period of consensus about the need to the 'relaince' on the car

He also argues people fear to criticise a transport heirarchy which places cycling and walking as the elite mode of travel:

The government has succeeded in creating a new hierarchy of transport. This hierarchy prioritises walking and cycling over all other forms of mobility. Regardless of the vicissitudes of the debate at any given moment, that discussion is not open to question. Nobody dares

Writing for Spiked (2001-2010)

Between 2001-2010 Williams wrote 34 articles for Spiked, many of which were again on issues relating to transport. In addition he sought to downplay modern fears of pollution and decried a lack of vision in modern architecture to challenge the 'orthodox' position which puts concern for environmental limits at its centre.

Environmentalism dominant in architecture

He argues that a consensus around the need to plan for environmental limits, beginning with the architect, represents a more insidious reality which seeks to socially engineer communities and ban anything contrary to the mainstream:

New Urbanism primarily advocates close-knit communities based on ‘neighbourhoods [that are] compact, pedestrian-friendly, and mixed-use [which] bring diverse ages, races, and incomes into daily interaction, strengthening the personal and civic bonds essential to an authentic community.’ (8) They decry suburbia, car-prioritisation and sprawl. New Urbanism is fundamentally a reactionary movement for urban stasis. However, the vacuum of architectural discourse, the inability and unwillingness of leading architects to bother to provide a theoretical framework to their designs, together with the acceptance of environmental limits, has cleared the way for New Urbanism to look like a dynamic organisation with exciting ideas. It has also been helped by the fact that New Urbanists do have a moral framework that has been unchallenged by the architectural mainstream. Indeed, such is the acceptance of the ethical codes of community-building that infuses most New Urbanist thinking that most architects are complicit with the tenets of car-reduction, reduced environmental intrusion, locally-sourced materials, participatory design, a sacrosanct urban-memory and the privileging of (sic) nature of humanity...The Charter for the New Urbanism looks to forming ‘identifiable areas that encourage citizens to take responsibility for their maintenance and evolution (where) streets and squares…enable neighbours to know each other and protect their communities.’ While these sound like pleasant homilies and an innocent nostalgia for the reinvigoration of neighbourliness, there is a less tolerant aspect to the pattern-book approach of the New Urbanists, in which disharmony can be designed out and neighbourliness engineered in

Carbon reduction = Anti-humanity

He argues that the desire to reduce energy consumption is a 'ritualistic frenzy' with no purpose, that even if CO2 emmisions do cause climate change it is not logical to reduce their emission, that rational debate is the real answer and that reducing emmisions is anti-humanity:

For some celebrity hypochondriacs, OCD has become a fashion statement, for others it is just a chain around their neck. But there is one major obsessive compulsion that has become a central feature of all our lives to the extent that there is real kudos in becoming its victim. Far from reducing anxiety, the latest OCD – Obsessive Carbon Dogma – actually raises anxiety in order to give itself some therapeutic rationale. Fear of rising tides, of population growth, of China and India, of motor cars, of energy use, and of most other aspects of contemporary society, has led us to develop an infatuation with carbon and the mindless repetitive trivia of everyday life. Such is the extent of this compulsion that it has even become government policy in many developed countries...There is a simple cure for OCD sufferers and it is up to us who haven’t succumbed to the Obsessive Carbon Delusion to save them from themselves. We simply need to argue for rationality and reasoned debate. We should point out that not only should our world not revolve around reducing carbon emissions, but it is, in fact, CO2 that makes the world go round. Humanity is not simply the sum total of its carbon emissions – in fact humans make carbon meaningful. We would be nothing without expending energy, and lots of it, to transform the world and to make us what we are....Even if carbon emissions are causing global warming, and even if global warming has the potential to cause dangerous sea-level rise, it still doesn’t follow automatically that we should use less carbon. Maybe we should use more carbon. More carbon energy to create flood defences, build escape roads, construct new cities, expand cheap flights to improve the ability of people to choose where they live. Unfortunately, the more that we become blinded by a carbon infatuation, the more we are in very real danger of losing sight of our options and our humanity. The cure for OCD is to use, create, invent and develop more things. Rather than keeping our heads stuck in our bins, this is the creative way to solve problems

Career Chronology

• April 24, 1959 - Born in South Wales
• 1977-1979(approx) - Bartlett School of Architecture, Environmental Design, Town Planning and the Built Environment, UCL – Diploma of architecture
• 1977-2000 - Chartered Architect and Project Manager
• 1994-1996(approx) - BBC London - Architecture critic
• 1997 - 2000 - [[Living Marxism/LM - Contributor/Writer
• 1997 - 2005(approx) - Transport Research Group – Director
• February 1998 - FX – Writer/contributor
• 2000 - 2005 - Architect's Journal - Technical editor
• 2000 - 2013 - Architect's Journal - Contributor/Writer
• 2001 - 2006 - Daily Telegraph - Transport commentator
• 2001 - 2010 - Spiked - Contributor/Writer
• 2002 - 2007 - New Humanist – Writer/contributor
• 2003 - 2007(approx) - Audacity - Speaker and Contributor/Writer
• 2003 - 2010 - 'Future of' - Coordinator of the 'future of...' festivals
• 2004 - 2013 - Times Higher Education supplement – Writer/contributor
• 2005 - Present - NBS Learning Channels - Architectural producer
• 2005 - Present - Battle of Ideas - Speaker
• 2005 - Present - Bookshop Barnies - Organiser
• 26 March 2010 - BD - Contributor/Writer
• 2009 - 2011 - Short Cuts guide book series on industry standards in architecture - Writer and illustrator
• 7 May 2010 - Blueprint - Contributor/Writer
• 2010 - Present -ManTowNHuman - Director and founder)
• 2 December 2011 - The Economist - Contributor/Writer
• 30 March 2011 - Present - The Architectural Review - Contributor/Writer
• 2011 - Present - Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China - Lecturer in Architecture/ Course leader in Environmental Science & department founder
• 25 April 2013 - Present - MPTF (masterplanning the future) - Managing Editor

Other Links with the Network

Battle of Ideas Panel Appearances

2005

• Saturday 29th October 2005 - Austin Williams appeared with: Kenan Malik (broadcaster, writer and author of The Meaning of Race and Man, Beast and Zombie), Oona Muirhead (director of strategy and communications, LGA), Ken Worpole (author and urban policy advisor) and Dolan Cummings (convenor, The Battle for Community, wrote for Living Marxism, writes for Spiked), discussing ‘What is Community?’, at the Battle of Ideas

2006

• Sunday 29th October 2006 - Italic textAustin Williams appeared with: Joe Kaplinsky (He has written for Living Marxism, Culture Wars andSpiked, contributed to the Institute of Ideas and WORLDbytes, spoken at theat the Battle of Ideas, Manifesto Club and Manchester Salon and is a shareholder of Spiked Ltd), Oliver Morton (chief news and features editor, Nature), Peter Sammonds (professor of geophysics, University College London, has contributed articles attacking the global warming hypothesis to Living Marxism, the Institute of Ideas and Spiked), Professor Geoffrey Wadge (professorial research fellow, Environmental Systems Science Centre, University of Reading; volcanologist; chair of the Foreign and Commonwealth Scientific Advisory Committee on Montserrat Volcanic Activity), discussing ‘Nature's Revenge?’, at the ‘‘Battle of Ideas’’.
• Sunday 29th October 2006 - Austin Williams appeared with: Dr Jim Butcher (senior lecturer, Faculty of Business and Sciences, Canterbury Christ Church University; author, Ecotourism, NGOs and Development (forthcoming), has written for Spiked, participated in Claire Fox News with Claire Fox and has been employed as a tour guide trainer by WORLDwrite), Francis Glare (director of urbanism, Building Design Partnership), Kirk Leech (project officer, Research Defence Society; writer and researcher on environment and development, King's College London, wrote forLiving Marxism/LM sometimes under the name Kirk Williams. He has been a 'regular contributor to Spiked-online, 'the assistant director of WORLDwrite and written for the Institute of Ideas, Culture Wars and Novo. He is a co-founder of Fans For Freedom), Sara Parkin (founder director, Forum for the Future, patron of Population Matters), Dr David Satterthwaite (senior fellow, Human Settlements, International Institute for Environment and Development) and Dr Peter Martin (lecturer, department of engineering science, University of Oxford), discussing ‘What does sustainability mean for the developing world?’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Sunday 29th October 2006 - Austin Williams appeared with: Tony Gilland, Dr Myles Allen (head of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department, University of Oxford; Natural Environment Research Council research fellow), and Richard Rees (architect; urban design director, Building Design Partnership), Lucy Siegle (columnist, Observer), discussing ‘Carbon, carbon everywhere?’, at the Battle of Ideas.

2007

• Monday 1st October 2007 - Austin Williams appeared with: Clive Grinyer (director of design, Orange France Telecom), Patrick Cox (executive creative director, Wolff Olins; designer, London 2012 logo), Tom Dunmore (editor-in-chief, Stuff and [www.stuff.tv ‘stuff-tv’]), Jonathan Barnbrook (typographer/designer and founder of Virus Foundry), and Martyn Perks (director, Thinking Apart; co-author, Big Potatoes: the London manifesto for innovation, has written for Spiked, Culture Wars and the Future Cities Project, has appeared on Claire Fox News, and wrote a publication for cScape), discussing ‘Design in denial?’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• 27th October 2007 - Austin Williams appeared with: Tony McGuirck (chairman, BDP; architect and urban designer), Kieran Long (editor, Architects’ Journal and Architectural Review; journalist, critic, teacher on design, architecture and the city; author, Hatch: The New Architectural Generation), Naresh Fernandes (editor-in-chief, Time Out India; author, Bombay Then and Now; co-editor, Bombay, Meri Jaan: Writings on Mumbai), Phillipe Legrain (visiting senior fellow, LSE’s European Institute; author, Immigrants: your country needs them and European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics are in a Mess – and How to Put Them Right; former economic adviser to the President of the European Commission), and Claire Fox (director, Institute of Ideas, wrote for Living Marxism, member of the RCP), discussing 'Age of the metropolis: What is the future of cities?', at the Battle of Ideas.
• Sunday 28th October 2007 - Austin Williams appeared with: Martyn Perks (director, Thinking Apart; co-author, Big Potatoes: the London manifesto for innovation, has written for Spiked, Culture Wars and the Future Cities Project, has appeared on Claire Fox News, is a co-author of the Big Potatoes manifesto and wrote a publication for cScape), Molly Webb (business engagement manager, The Climate Group; author, The Disrupters: Lessons for Low-Carbon Innovation from the New Wave of Environmental Pioneers), and Professor Anthony Dunne (head, Design Interactions Department, Royal College of Art), discussing ‘Designing Behaviour’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Sunday 28th October 2007 - Austin Williams appeared with: Professor Michael Oxley (professor of housing, De Montfort University; leader, ESRC-funded study 'Assessing the Viability of Urban Housing Development'), Adam Sampson (chief executive officer, Shelter; member, Home Ownership Task Force), Dave Clements (public servant; blogger, Huffington Post; convenor, IOI Social Policy Forum, writes for for Culture Wars and the Manifesto Club, has spoken and organised events for the Manchester Salon, participates in the Future Cities Project and writes for and is a shareholder of Spiked Ltd), and Dr Tristram Hunt (broadcaster; lecturer in modern British history, Queen Mary, University of London, involved in the setting up of the Science Media Centre), discussing ‘More than bricks and mortar?’, at the Battle of Ideas.

2008

• Saturday 12th July 2008 - Austin Williams appeared with: Dr Peter Martin (lecturer, School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, University of Manchester; Principal Investigator, engaging cogs), Dr Tao Wang (research fellow, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and at The Sussex Energy Group in SPRU, University of Sussex), Catherine Sampson (novelist; resident of Beijing; author of Pool of Unease and Out of Mind; former China correspondent, The Times), and Sheila Lewis (director, Volanti Consulting), discussing ‘Damned if you do and damned if you don't: The Three Gorges Dam Controversy’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Thursday 23rd October 2008 - Austin Williams appeared with: Sean Griffiths (director of Architecture and Design Practice FAT; Louis I Kahn visiting professor of architecture at Yale University), CJ Lim (director, Studio 8 Architects; professor of architecture and urbanism, The Bartlett, University College London; author, Food City (forthcoming)), Helen Groves (architect director, BDP Bristol), Kieran Long (editor, Architects’ Journal and Architectural Review; journalist, critic, teacher on design, architecture and the city; author, Hatch: The New Architectural Generation), Professor Jeremy Myerson (Helen Hamlyn Chair of Design, RCA; co-founder and director, Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design; member, international selection panel, ICSID World Design Capital 2014), Karl Sharro (architect; writer; Middle East commentator; co-author, Manifesto: Towards a New Humanism in Architecture, writes for Spiked, Culture Wars and Novo, and is a co-author of ManTownHuman's manifesto), Amin Taha (director, Amin Taha Architects), Benedict Zucchi (main board architect director and leader of healthcare studio, BDP London), discussing ‘Innovation in Architecture Late-Nite Review’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Sunday 2nd November 2008 - Austin Williams appeared with: Leela Gandhi (professor of English, University of Chicago; author Affective Communities: anticolonial thought, fin-de-siècle radicalism, and the politics of friendship; founding co-editor, Postcolonial Studies journal), Professor Ashis Nandy (senior honorary fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi; recipient of Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize (2007); author, omnibus edition of writing, Exiled at Home, Return from Exile, and A Very Popular Exile), Martin Wright (founding editor, Green Futures; visiting judge, Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy), and Claire Fox (director, Institute of Ideas, wrote for Living Marxism, she is a director, company secretary and shareholder of the company which runs the Institute, the Academy of Ideas), discussing ‘The Battle for Progress’, at the Battle of Ideas.

2009

• Thursday 15th October 2009 - Austin Williams appeared with: Cany Ash (partner, Ash Sakula Architects), Chris Bannister (director, Hopkins Architects (winner, Building Magazine's 'Sustainable Architect of the Year 2008')), Kieran Long (editor, Architects’ Journal and Architectural Review; journalist, critic, teacher on design, architecture and the city; author, Hatch: The New Architectural Generation), Charlie Luxton (designer specialising in sustainable refurbishment; writer and TV presenter, including Five's Build a New Life in the Country), Keith Papa (architect director, BDP), Karl Sharro (architect; writer; Middle East commentator; co-author, Manifesto: Towards a New Humanism in Architecture, writes for Spiked, Culture Wars and Novo, and is a co-author of ManTownHuman's manifesto), Amin Taha (director, Amin Taha Architects), and Craig White (Founding director, White Design and ModCell), discussing ‘Sustainability in Architecture: Late-Nite Review', at the Battle of Ideas.
• Saturday 31st October 2009 - Austin Williams appeared with: Professor Mike Hume (professor of climate change, University of East Anglia; founding director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research; author, Why We Disagree About Climate Change: understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity), discussing ‘Bookshop Barnie at the Battle: 'Why We Disagree about Climate Change, at the Battle of Ideas in collaboration with Bookshop Barnies, http://www.battleofideas.org.uk/2009/session_detail/2518 ‘Bookshop Barnie at the Battle: 'Why We Disagree about Climate Change], 31 October 2009, Battle of Ideas, accessed 16 January 2015.</ref>.
• Sunday 1st November 2009 - Austin Williams appeared with: Parminder Bahra (poverty and development correspondent, The Times), Professor Stuart Corbridge (head, Development Studies Institute, LSE; co-author, Seeing the State: governance and governmentality in India), and Dr Sunand Prasad (senior partner, Penoyre & Prasad LLP; immediate past president, RIBA), discussing ‘India's Future: Slumdogs or Millionaires?’, at the Battle of Ideas.

2010

• Monday 25th October 2010 - Austin Williams appeared with: Michelle Di Leo (director, Flying Matters, the national campaign for flying), Yvonne Hubner (principal policy advisor, Institution of Engineering and Technology), and Keith McCabe (principal consultant, Atkins; chair, Manchester Institute of Engineering and Technology Transport Interest Group, is an organiser of the Manchester Salon, a speaker at the at the Battle of Ideas and a shareholder of Spiked Ltd ), discussing ‘The future of transport: the highway to hell?’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Saturday 30th October 2010 - Austin Williams appeared with: Alastair Donald (associate director, Future Cities Project; project director, British Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014, has written for Spiked, is a founding member of ManTownHuman and co-edited a book with LM associates Dave Clements, Martin Earnshaw and Austin Williams), Sarah Gaventa (director, public space, Corus and European Aluminium Association (CABE); co-founder, Scarlet Projects; author, Concrete Design and New Public Spaces), Harry Rich (chief executive, Royal Institute of British Architects), and Jane Wernick (director, Jane Wernick Associates; editor, Building Happiness: architecture to make you smile), discussing ‘Happy-clappy architecture: designing for well-being’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Saturday 30 October 2010 - Austin Williams appeared with: David Aaronovitch (columnist, The Times; author, Voodoo Histories; chair, Index on Censorship), ‘Bookshop Barnie at the battle: Voodoo Histories’, at the Battle of Ideas in collaboration with the Bookshop Barnies.
• Sunday 31st October 2010 - Austin Williams appeared with: Bob Joyce (group engineering director, Jaguar Land Rover), Antony Oliver (editor, New Civil Engineer magazine), Dr Natasha McCarthy (head of policy, British Academy; member, steering committee, Forum for Philosophy, Engineering and Technology), Dr Paul Reeves (engineering software designer based in Cambridge, shareholder of, Spiked Ltd), and Dale Russell (director, Russell Studio; visiting professor, Innovation Design Engineering, Royal College of Art; emeritus visiting professor, Central Saint Martins, UAL), discussing ‘Innovative engineering: within limits?’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Austin Williams appeared with: Bob Joyce (group engineering director, Jaguar Land Rover), Antony Oliver (editor, New Civil Engineer magazine), Dr Natasha McCarthy (head of policy, British Academy; member, steering committee, Forum for Philosophy, Engineering and Technology), Dr Paul Reeves (engineering software designer based in Cambridge, shareholder of, Spiked Ltd), and Dale Russell (director, Russell Studio; visiting professor, Innovation Design Engineering, Royal College of Art; emeritus visiting professor, Central Saint Martins, UAL), discussing ‘Innovative engineering: within limits?’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Tuesday 2nd November 2010 - Austin Williams appeared with: Natalie Haynes (comedian; journalist; broadcaster; author, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life), discussing ‘Bookshop Barnie with Natalie Haynes’, at the Battle of Ideas in collaboration with the Bookshop Barnies.

2012

• Friday 26th October 2012 - Austin Williams appeared with: Dr Martin Jacques (author, When China Rules the World: the end of the Western World and the birth of a new global order, was the reforming editor of Marxism Today (MT) who took it from the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of Great Britain to a market-friendly journal, and is an associate of Demos), discussing ‘Bookshop Barnie Martin Jacques’, at the Battle of Ideas in collaboration with Bookshop Barnies.

2013

• Saturday 19th October 2013 - Austin Williams appeared with: Cany Ash (partner, Ash Sakula Architects), Pedro Bismarck (architect; editor, Punkto magazine), Alastair Donald (associate director, Future Cities Project; project director, British Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014, has written for Spiked, is a founding member of ManTownHuman and co-edited a book with LM associates Dave Clements, Martin Earnshaw and Austin Williams), and Oliver Wainwright (architecture and design critic, the Guardian), discussing ‘Pop-ups: overhyped and everywhere?’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Saturday 19th October 2013 - Austin Williams appeared with: Theodore Dounas (associate professor and acting head, Architecture Department, Xian Jiaotong Liverpool University; founding partner, archIV+), Penny Lewis (lecturer, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture, Robert Gordon University; co-founder,AE Foundation, has written for Spiked, has spoken at a Future Cities event and has represented the Manifesto Club), Farshid Moussavi (founder and head, Farshid Moussavi Architecture; professor in Practice of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design), and Malcolm Smith (director and global leader, Urban Design and Masterplanning, Arup), discussing ‘Master-planning for the future?’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Sunday 20th October 2013 - Austin Williams appeared with: Jonathan Fenby (China Director and Managing Partner, Trusted Sources), Alan Hudson (director of leadership and public policy programmes, University of Oxford; moderate middle distance runner), and Dr Xin Xin (senior research fellow, China Media Centre, University of Westminster), discussing ‘In Conversation: China’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Friday 25th October 2013 - Austin Williams appeared with: Paul Morley (music journalist; author, The North (and almost everything in it)), discussing ‘Bookshop Barnie: Paul Morley’, at the Battle of Ideas in collaboration with the Bookshop Barnies.

2014

• Saturday 18th October 2014 - Austin Williams appeared with: Dr Rana Mitter (Director, University China Centre, University of Oxford; on the organizing committee for the International Conference on Civil Resistance and Power Politics, author, China’s War with Japan, 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival), discussing ‘Cities in the machine age: all systems, no soul?’, at the Battle of Ideas in collaboration with the Bookshop Barnies.
• Saturday 18th October 2014 - Austin Williams appeared with: Dr Francesca Bria (senior project lead and senior researcher, Nesta, UK Innovation Foundation; advisor, European Commission on Future Internet and Smart Cities policy), Alastair Donald (associate director, Future Cities Project; project director, British Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014, has written for Spiked, is a founding member of ManTownHuman and co-edited a book with LM associates Dave Clements, Martin Earnshaw and Austin Williams), Lean Doody (associate director and smart cities lead, Arup), Tia Kansara (founder & director, Kansara Hackney Ltd; executive committee member, London Business School’s Global Energy Summit; co-director, CleanTechChallenge), and Dr Paul Zanelli (chief technical officer, Transport Systems Catapult), discussing ‘Cities in the machine age: all systems, no soul?’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Saturday 18th October 2014 - Austin Williams appeared with: Chris Barton (product marketing manager, Jaguar Land Rover), Kevin McCullagh (founder, plan , set up the think tank Design Agenda with fellow LM associate Nico Macdonald in 1994, spoke at the 'Future Visions: Future Cities conference' of the Future Cities Project, and has written for Spiked), Chris Moody (head of innovation commercialisation, Transport Systems Catapult), Peter Stevens (racing car designer), Graham Stringer (Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton; member, House of Commons Transport Committee), and produced with Alastair Donald (associate director, Future Cities Project; project director, British Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014), discussing ‘From bullet trains to driverless cars: where is transport going?’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Austin Williams appeared with: Rachel Armstrong (professor of experimental architecture, Newcastle University), Fred Manson (associate director, Heatherwick studio), Dr Patrik Schumacher (partner, Zaha Hadid Architects), and Alastair Donald (associate director, Future Cities Project; project director, British Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014, has written for Spiked, is a founding member of ManTownHuman and co-edited a book with LM associates Dave Clements, Martin Earnshaw and Austin Williams), discussing ‘What is good architecture?’, at the Battle of Ideas.
• Sunday 19th October 2014 - Austin Williams appeared with: Lianghuo Fan (professor in education; head, Mathematics & Science Education Research Centre, University of Southampton), Dr Munira Mirza (deputy mayor, education and culture, Greater London Authority, has written for Spiked, cofounded the Manifesto Club, has spoken at the Huddersfield Salon and led a discussion on WORLDbytes, judged the [ManTownHuman]] winter school), Andrew Old (teacher; education blogger), Michael Shaw (programme director for online learning, TES), and Cara Bleiman (teacher and musician), discussing ‘Lessons from Asia: what is a world-class education?’, at the Battle of Ideas.

Contact Details

45 St Lawrence Court,
De Beauvoir, London N1 5TP
Phone: +44 (0)7957 534 909

• Website: futurecities
• Twitter: Future Cities

External resources

• "Austin Williams", LinkedIn, accessed July 2009.
• Profile, "Austin Williams", ManTownHuman website, accessed 29 Dec 2010
• Profile: 'Austin Williams' xjtlu website, accessed 6 October 2013

Publications

1997

• Austin Williams, ‘Pedestrian transport policies’, LM Commentary, 18 June 1997.
• Austin Williams, ‘Futures: Transport policy on the road to nowhere’, LM, October 1997.

1998

• Austin Williams, ‘Futures: Speed reduction can kill’, LM, June 1998.
• Austin Williams, ‘'No Deal for Transport' - Austin Williams, co-ordinator of the Transport Research Group, is far from impressed with New Labour's proposed transport policy’, LM Commentary, 22 July 1998.
• Austin Williams, ‘Futures: The government's anti-transport policy’, LM, September 1998.

1999

• Austin Williams, ‘No speed please, we're British’, LM Commentary, 2 December 1999.

2000

• Austin Williams, ‘No U-turn on transport’, LM Commentary, 15 January 2000.
• Austin Williams, Transport in the New Millennium, Transport Research Publishing Inc., February 2000.
• Austin Williams & Simon Clark, ‘On Speed and Smoking’, LM, Summer 2000.

2001

• Austin Williams, ‘spiked-proposals: Transport: An end to fragmentation and divisions; long-term national planning; improvements to infrastructure; an overhaul of inner-city transport.’, Spiked, 7 June 2001.
• Austin Williams, ‘Safe as houses?: Do garages kill, and does paint poison?’, Spiked, 11 July 2001.
• Austin Williams, ‘Driving London to despair?: Congestion charging will do nothing for motorists - or for pedestrians and commuters. So what is it about?’, Spiked, 27 July 2001.
• Austin Williams, ‘Off the rails: When it suspended Railtrack, the UK government rode roughshod over democratic debate and business norms to create an even more fragmented rail system.’, Spiked, 23 October 2001.

2002

• Austin Williams, ‘Zen and the Art of Life-Cycle Maintenance’, in Ian Abley & James Heartfield Ed., Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age, Wiley, 4 Jan 2002.
• Austin Williams, ‘Baltic Centre: Gateshead to what?: The North-East's new Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts is a first-rate community centre, with very little art.’, Spiked, 19 July 2002.
• Austin Williams, ‘Driving deprivation: A new report finds a correlation between child deaths in car accidents and poverty - or is it rain?’, Spiked, 19 November 2002.
• Austin Williams, ‘For whom the road tolls: The 'blue skies' thinking for UK transport is…find more and more ways to stop people from driving.’, Spiked, 28 November 2002.
• Austin Williams, ‘The Smoke clears: We've come a long way since the smog days of 1952.’, Spiked, 19 December 2002.

2003

• Austin Williams, ‘The not-so Good Life: The government's energy policy will take the UK down an exhausting route.’, Spiked, 11 March 2003.
• Austin Williams, ‘Steaming ahead: On its fortieth anniversary, the Beeching Report looks positively progressive compared to today's transport policy.’, Spiked, 27 March 2003.
• Austin Williams, ‘Get on your bus: The message of the UK government's new transport policy: if the 'socially excluded' want to travel, they'd better have a good reason.’, Spiked, 2 April 2003.
• Austin Williams, ‘Don't trip and drive: The UK Department for Transport gets groovy for Glastonbury.’, Spiked, 25 June 2003.
• Austin Williams, ‘Transport and its discontents: Critics of the UK government’s roads policy say nothing radical, new...or even critical.’, Spiked, 11 July 2003.
• Austin Williams, ‘Keeping up appearances: The UK government's new roads policy amounts to filling in pot-holes.’, Spiked, 15 October 2003.

2004

• Kate Trant & Austin Williams, The Macro World of Microcars, ISBN: 1904772048, Black Dog Publishing Ltd., 14 September 2004.
• Austin Williams, ‘The long lens of the law: There's something shifty about the Police Federation’s u-turn on speed cameras.’, Spiked, 7 July 2004.
• Austin Williams, ‘Getting us nowhere fast: Think-tanks and pundits are now in the driving seat of Britain's transport policy.’, Spiked, 28 July 2004.
• Austin Williams, ‘‘I hate driving in my car’: Londoners are being asked to sign a pledge against the four-wheeled demon.’, Spiked, 23 September 2004.
• Austin Williams, ‘Off the rails: Reactions to the crash at Ufton Nervet will make our transport system even slower.’, Spiked, 9 November 2004.
• Austin Williams, ‘Charity by extortion: Should speeding motorists pay off the victims of other people's crimes?’, Spiked, 24 November 2004.

2005

• Austin Williams, ‘Keep your eyes on the road: New police powers could turn motorists into outlaws.’, Spiked, 18 March 2005.
• Austin Williams, ‘Lessons from Chicago: Over a hundred years ago, the entire city of Chicago was lifted up above the waterline. Why can't we do the same with New Orleans today?’, Spiked, 12 September 2005.
• Austin Williams, ‘Micro-aspirations: The fashion for microgeneration reveals a sluggish approach to the future.’, Spiked, 30 September 2005.

2006

• Austin Williams, ‘New Orleans and the New Urban vision: Progressive architects have left the building.’, Spiked, 9 February 2006.
• Austin Williams, ‘On the state of English cities: A new government report takes a small-town approach to metropolitan living.’, Spiked, 21 March 2006.
• Austin Williams, ‘Down with Carbon Colonialism: Did you know that the money you donate to carbon-offsetting schemes is often spent on programmes that stifle development in the Third World?’, Spiked, 28 September 2006.

2007

• Austin Williams, [ ‘Eating the greens’], NY Salon, 13 February 2007.
• Austin Williams, ‘Steering the debate in the wrong direction: For a government whose transport policy is to punish motorists, the 1.5million who signed a petition against road-pricing are a political pollutant.’, Spiked, 19 February 2007.
• Austin Williams, ‘Are environmentalists an oppressed minority?: In TV, film, newspapers, schools and political circles, the green outlook has become the new orthodoxy. And still greens aren't happy.’, Spiked, 23 April 2007.
• Austin Williams, ‘On trial in the Red Star gallery: Sam Tanenhaus, the American editor and author of a book on McCarthyism, proves to be a prickly interviewee.’, Spiked, 30 April 2007.
• Austin Williams, ‘Reducing cities to a statistical sprawl: The Global Cities exhibition at Tate Modern – all warnings about overpopulation and eco-doom – shows architects have lost their ‘utopian drive’.’, Spiked, 26 July 2007.

2008

• Alastair Donald, Richard Williams, Karl Sharro, Alan Farlie, Debby Kuypers & Austin Williams, ’Manifesto: Towards a New Humanism in Architecture’, ManTownHuman, 2008.
• Austin Williams, ‘Three cheers for China’s economic miracle: Development in China has lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty, and in the past decade alone Shanghai has built more skyscrapers than already exist in New York. Listen carefully: this is a good thing.’, Spiked, 25 April 2008.
• Austin Williams, The Enemies of Progress: Dangers of Sustainability, Imprint Academic, ISBN-10: 1845400984, 1 May 2008.
• Dave Clements, Alastair Donald, Martin Earnshaw, and Austin Williams, The Future of Community: Reports of a Death Greatly Exaggerated, Pluto Press, ISBN-10: 0745328172, 20 October 2008.

2009

• Austin Williams, ‘Shortcuts Book 1: Structure and Fabric, NBS, ISBN: 9781859463215, March 2009.
• Austin Williams, ‘Shortcuts Book 2: Sustainability and Practice’, NBS, ISBN: 9781859463222, March 2009.
• Austin Williams, ‘Unsustainable Arguments’, in Stanley Feldman and Vincent Marks Ed., Global Warming and Other Bollocks, Metro Publishing, 20 June 2009.
• Austin Williams, ‘Political 'stranger danger' in classrooms’, The Australian, 10 August 2009.
• Austin Williams, ‘Dongtan: the eco-city that never was:China’s first big eco-city has been put on hold, not because it was too ambitious, but because it wasn’t ambitious enough.’, Spiked, 1 September 2009.
• Austin Williams, ‘An epidemic of OCD: Obsessive Carbon Dogma: From living in virtual darkness to minutely measuring their water-use, greens’ fixation with carbon counting is verging on a mental illness.’, Spiked, 24 September 2009.

2010

• Austin Williams, ‘The Rough Guide to the Future’, Jon Turney, Rough Guides, 2010.
• Austin Williams, ‘le Journal Speciale Z’, No 1, Ecole Speciale d'Architecture, Paris, 2010.
• Austin Williams, 'Corroding the Curriculum: Sustainability v Education' in 'Academic Questions’, Sustainability: Special Issue, Vol 23, No 1, pp. 70-83, 2010.
• Austin Williams, 'Global warming debate raises tempers', 26 March 2010, BDonline, accessed 26 March 2015.</ref>
• Austin Williams, ‘Is the motor car driving the world to destruction?: Two Billion Cars, like many modern green tracts, mixes demands for restraint with celebrations of techno-solutions to the problems we face. And as always, the restraint wins out.’, Spiked, 27 August 2010.
• Austin Williams in Jon Turney Ed., The Rough Guide to The Future, Rough Guides, ISBN-10: 1858287812, 1 November 2010.
• Austin Williams, ‘Fashionable Dilemmas,’Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, Vol 2, Issue 1, (Intellect) December 2010.

2011

• Austin Williams in Alex Danchev Ed., The 100 Artists' Manifestos: From the Futurists to the Stuckist, Penguin Classic, ISBN-10: 0141191791, 27 January 2011.
• Austin Williams & Alastair Donald, The Lure of the City: From Slums to Suburbs, Pluto Press, ISBN-10:0745331777, 12 September 2011.
• Austin Williams, Shortcuts: Book 3 - Legal and Environment, author / illustrator, NBS, 2011.