Lovely few moments listening to Jim Dwyer talk about his childhood and subsequent career in journalism, all in Manhattan. His mention of Charles Snyder and the story behind his memorial took me back to our recent studies in the Thursday class of some American architecture and somehow or other I got round to reading of the conflicts between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs in New York in particular but in urban design theory and practice in general. Out shopping earlier and picked up the ( charity shop £2 ) DVD of Mean Streets which had to be watched so I took the Big Apple in my head to bed. And then there’s Chinatown, Jack. Will I get to Chicago this year, I keep asking myself, as the exchange rate – sterling to the US dollar – gets worse and worse?