The weird and wonderful world (or World) of peer review

I'm now getting to be quite seasoned at the process of peer review. So far this year I've managed (somehow) to submit four papers for review and I await commentary on all of them. But, to be frank, it's a very odd process. I've been joking on Twitter that I've been making sacrifices to the gods of peer review, because, well you might as well. I really do have my tongue firmly stuck in my cheek when I tell students they must use academic journal articles because of the "gold standard" of peer review. The problems are well rehearsed, especially blind peer review: many reviewers are just unhelpful and rude, hidden by the anonymity of the "blind" process; it's not blind at all and could never hope to be – I've raised concerns that I've seen papers before to editors and they've just said go ahead; and the editors have said go ahead as they struggle to get reviewers; you can submit a paper and get rejected and then resubmit it and be accepted. In the social sciences and humanities in particular, peer review also seems to be much more about giving essay feedback than going through findings with a fine-toothed comb (although the scandals of forged results and plagiarism in the natural sciences suggest the process isn't going well there either).

I've had a mix of experiences. Two of my papers accepted so far went into, or were intended for, special issues, so they had lighter-touch peer review. Of my other two papers, my difficult theory paper got the best peer-review I could ever imagine – reams of helpful comments and references to read it up on. The other paper eventually got published in Environment and Planning C after a nice wee peer-review process; and I've discussed before how helpful peer-review was in getting the difficult theory paper out. However, the EPC first got submitted to another journal and I got the worst set of comments I've ever received on anything (until just the other week). In particular this pair (edited down to make them sound particularly horrendous and preserve some vestige of anonymity):

Although this paper covers an interesting area and attempts to tell a convincing story, its failure to follow basic research standards in reporting and contextualisation means that it is not suitable for publication.It does not recognise other ABI approaches which act as benchmarks and alternatives to 'New Life'; critically, several of these pre-date this central government entry into the field. So GEAR, Area Agreements, APTs, etc. were already established along partnership lines, had spawned their own community involvements and fora and with some degree of success had been addressing the regeneration issues this paper discusses. NL was a political project, therefore, to counter the [other authorities] successes.This paper denies that history; apart from a scant few, does not offer any of the many references on … There are other errors of fact or omission.

Were one to use the standard criteria for publishing in an international Journal – clear originality of the main questions posed, a rigorously presented paper likely to appeal to an international audience etc. – this paper would be a reject.It is not:(1) clear what is original(2) why the findings of the paper are agreed around the 2 themes introduced on page 15(3) presented in a way such that the findings have been sufficiently conceptualised – most the front end has been devoted to a review of well known territory…

To add a bit of context – this was a difficult paper. I wrote it in a few evenings, in between my thesis corrections, while working full time for the Scottish Government. One of my supervisors supported my writing and helped a bit and he knew we would be asked for major corrections, but even he said it was the worst set of reviewers' comments he'd ever received. They were so vituperative, bitter and unhelpful that I actually presumed the journal had rejected it based on them. I was quite shocked when I received an email from the editorial assistant, after the paper had been accepted for EPC (in much revised form, but with the same central argument and evidence base), asking why I had not resubmitted it.

In the course of drafting this blog post, I've since received a further rejection from a journal. One of the reviewer's comments were similarly helpful to these. I was so hurt and angry by them I immediately emailed the editor back suggesting they should not have bothered forwarding it on as they were utterly unhelpful. Rather wonderfully, the editor got back very quickly suggesting:

"Reviewers have different styles and some can come across as rude as you observed. However, I think it's often because they are so pressed for time and still trying to be of service to the journal. I thought it was a bit ironic that this reviewer criticized your article for being stream of consciousness when that is what the review itself very much appeared to be. But I hope there are still valuable comments you can take from it."

For the first 18 months of my full-time academic career I managed to stay off the editors' radars for peer review, but papers now roll in about one every two months. I use this horrible experience to try and be a good reviewer. I'm even tempted to do what I know a colleague has started doing: finish the review with their name, to end the pointlessness of the anonymity. Two experiences recently have made me reflect a bit more on my role as a reviewer. Firstly, I recently reviewed a paper that was very much in my research specialism. It needed a lot of work to bring it up to publication. But, if I was horribly uncooperative and frankly evil, I could've rejected it out of hand and used the ideas it contained, with my own knowledge and reading, to produce a very similar paper. But that would have been grossly unfair, especially since it was fairly easy to work out who the authors were from the reference list and they didn't need to be treated like that. I provided about half a page of feedback and comments and a handful of references to help them on their way. In the brief format of a Twitter direct message one of the authors said (once the farce of anonymity had completely broken down): "Thanks, comments very fair & constructive. We knew it needed work but decided rather than miss the opportunity to submit and then revise it". Pretty much what I was doing with my EPC paper.

Another recent incident was when I paper was sent back to me to peer review for the second time. This time, when I logged into the journal submission website* I could see the other reviewer's comments. And, well, basically, they were a lot more detailed than mine and gave me a massive thwack of self-doubt. Am I a good reviewer?

With this in mind, and with the permission of the editor, I thought I'd post my most recent review here:

"First of all, I hope the authors take these comments in the spirit they are intended - as constructive criticism. There is a paper here (if not two or three) and the authors are clearly skilled scholars, but the paper is far off publication as it stands.I will start with two broad comments. Firstly, the paper has been submitted as a "Research Article". As a reviewer I cannot accept it as such as it is a review article. Secondly, the paper really lacks structure - the best word to describe it is "baggy". As a reader it felt like I was being bounced around like a ball in a pinball machine. The paper leapt from policy area to policy area and from theorist to theorist. The abstract, I think, is testimony to this. It could be an abstract to anything - it certainly does not inform the reader as to what to expect from this paper. I certainly was not expecting the conclusion when I got there. To move forward, I think it would be really useful to sit down and get the conclusion nailed, so you know the direction you are writing towards. This means the paper can then have a very thorough edit to give it a strong focus.Some specific comments to pick up on:- the introductory section (pp1-2) makes some sweeping generalisations (some of which you contradict almost immediately) with very light referencing. It also essentially repeats the section from page 2-7 which with editing would make a better introduction - the statement on p7 of what the paper will do and focus on is excellent - keep hold of this and use it to direct your writing- you do need much more clarity on policy areas and what you mean by "science" throughout the paper. It is a bit too sweeping at the moment, and one of the most interesting things across the globe is how different policy areas are amenable to different ranges of evidence and vice versa. This would help support your point made on p7.- throughout you introduce big ideas, like "[theory in here]" and big theorists ([theorist] on p16 was particularly striking) without fully explaining the term/what the theorist says, or justifying why you are using them."

I've edited it down slightly and hidden a couple of bits to preserve anonymity, but I want to know, would this be helpful peer review for you? Am I evil and unhelpful or would you be pleased to receive this sort of feedback, particularly if you're an early career researcher?

In closing, I want to return to my recent rejection. The other very nice, worthwhile thing that the editor said in their reply email was:

"By the way, we also rate the reviews we receive for timely response and helpfulness. While we don't produce a "hall of shame,” we do present annual awards for the best reviewers for the journal. We hope this encourages reviewers to do the best jobs that they can, and also provides them with something they can put on their C.V.s to receive credit for an anonymous service."

This is not the first time I've heard of this – a colleague won a journal award for being their top reviewer. But perhaps this is a way to improve the quality of review and something more journal editors should consider? Or do we need something more radical like open peer review or move to a wiki model of academic publishing?

* I could rant about how crap manuscript central and the like are, but I'd be writing for weeks!

We are all complainers now

I'm quite interested in those little, boring bits of policy and governance that often go overlooked in the big stories of the day - like my interest in Community Planning in Scotland. One aspect of this is the public service reform agenda in Scotland. Public sector managers are all over it, but I think outside of their bubble, even politicians aren't that up to speed with it. This includes big things like the creation of the Police Scotland, where it looks like, just as the critics said, the service is being cut and standardised across Scotland. 

As aspect of this I've bumped into is the Public Service Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 (stay with me here, it will get marginally more interesting). This was mainly to do with the creation of Creative Scotland and getting rid of another few commissions. It also gave Scottish Ministers rather sweeping powers to create or destroy various public services in Scotland, but that was kept a bit quiet at the time. However, Part 8 of the Act is now coming home to roost - Scrutiny and Complaints. As you'll guess I'll be focusing on the latter bit.

I first came across this when the the housing association I am on the management committee of had to change its complaints handling procedure. Why did we have to do this. Well, if you scroll down to section 119 you'll discover that the act gives the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman power to create "Complaint Handling Procedures" for services which then have to be adopted. Last year the SPSO "consulted" with housing associations on this. By consulted, I mean they told us this was the procedure we must have. The higher education sector is now waking up to the fact the SPSO have done the same for us and so I spent 45 minutes this morning being told about it.

Basically, this complaints handling procedure is three stage - level 1 deal with it there and then; level 2 escalation to management, level 3 ombudsman. At all levels complaints have to be recorded and then reported. Where this gets interesting is the SPSO's attitude. They've been saying that they expect a lot more level 1 complaints and a lot more complaints ending up with them because of the simplified procedures. This is what a lot of people struggle to understand, but what I find particularly interesting.

The beguiling management logic behind this is the view that "complaints are the best thing we get" which I've heard said by quite a few managers in the private sector and public sector. The logic is that, if we get complaints, we know where our processes and service are not right, so we can improve it. In their attitude to the new complaints procedure the SPSO are applying this to all public services in Scotland. We are all now expected to identify and record level 1 complaints, and the SPSO will be all over us if our reporting levels are low. That their website is valuingcomplaints.org.uk says everything you need to know. As such it's another governance tool being applied in a managerial way; another facet of that suite of targets, outcomes, that are meant to make us all pull our socks up and deliver a better service. The trouble is, the SPSO does not seem to have realised the immense administrative burden on organisations, reeling from staff cuts, that this will cause.

The other interesting aspect of this is what it does to citizenship. The SPSO also expect public services to publicise our complaints procedure, using their standardised wording, and enable complaints to be taken. The three-stage procedure also short-cuts many traditional governance institutions within organisations that had a role intervening in complaints - the Council or a committee; management board; University Court etc. Complaints are now a matter of business administration to be adjudicated by the ombudsman. This is creating us a citizen-complainers. We are all expected to read our standardised complaints leaflets and immediately leap to the nearest person and complain heartily. And you'll no doubt guess what my feelings are about this. 

Beyond those questions of equity though, there is a bigger point about governance in the Foucauldian sense. Now, the SPSO are very clear on what is not a complaint - for example matters of academic judgement are not a complaint, although there may be elements of complaint in, say, a student's appeal. Fair enough. But their definition of a complaint is staggeringly broad:

'An expression of dissatisfaction by one or more individuals about the standard of service, action or lack of action by or on behalf of the Institution'

As with my views on the outcomes focus in the National Performance Framework, I do worry that this is depoliticising what should be political decision-making. The standard of service may be a political decision and to not offer it may be a political decision with implications for equity and outcomes. Reducing these to managerial procedures and processes is very dangerous. Yes, an organisation should listen to the views of service users, but our citizenship should not be based on whether we complain about something.

Demolish Morningside!

That was the controversial title of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe show I was involved in, the fantastic Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas organised by Beltane Public Engagement Network. Yes folks, after my most popular blog post ever on cycling and the Niceway Code (1244 hits so far...) we're back to me blogging about academia, which I know you all love...

So, what was the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas? Well, it was a range of academics speaking for an hour in the afternoon on a range of subjects to a paying audience. In our case, it was me, Professor Richard Williams of Edinburgh College of Art and the wonderful compère skills of stand-up Susan Morrison.

I've uploaded a sound recording of it to SoundCloud for you to listen to:



I've got some videos that have been given to me as well, including one where I explode with rage about the way Forth Ports have treated Leith and Edinburgh - I'm told this was quite the moment in the show!

Basically, the premise of my argument was one I've kind of rehearsed here - that we're more than happy to demolish deprived neighbourhoods and disrupt the lives of vulnerable working class people to delivering "mixed communities" but we'd never dream of doing the same to affluent neighbourhoods, like Morningside. Indeed, Edinburgh Council's accidental introduction of Moving to Opportunity when homeless people were housed in private-rented housing through a contract with a company, led to widespread opposition to the hoi polloi being moved into nice areas (often quite rightly, as the tenancies were not managed properly and there were many incidents of distressing anti-social behaviour).

Myself and Richard only spoke for about 15 minutes in total and then we moved onto discussion with the very informed audience. This was very interesting indeed it also allowed me to progress my argument a bit more - particularly introducing the complicated idea of "neighbourhood affects" and highlighting the complexity of understanding them in a Scottish context; and also my main argument that rather than demolishing neighbourhoods, maybe we should invest in them and deliver very good public services in them? That way we can move away from the situation where local authorities think that this is a good way to manage green space in a deprived neighbourhood:*

Two quick reflections on the experience. Firstly, the discussion ended up containing a lot of statistics and a lot of complex ideas. What was really impressive for me was the depth of this discussion. The audience members were very good at providing critical insights, particularly to the stats, highlighting for example, how Edinburgh's population stats are skewed because of the city's boundary and because people are increasingly living in West Lothian, Falkirk and Fife due to housing affordability issues.

Secondly, the audience response was quite amazing. We had an audience of 32, only 11 of whom were our friends and family (including my mum and my partner). Somebody came up to me at the end and suggested I should run for office. I declined politely as I think my role is best served in the academy. And, if I can do more things like this, then maybe I'll start to change how some people think. One of my mum's friends said to her afterwards that it was the best festival show he had seen that day, and the discussion and ideas that were being bounced around left him thinking for the rest of the day and distracted him from the concert he was seeing. 

So, in a little way, we were helping to create a bit of a Habermasian discourse. Of course, because we had the power imbued upon us as being "academics" it did not meet the conditions of the perfect public sphere. But the audience definitely didn't hold back from being engaged in the debate! And I can't tell you how nervous I was beforehand. I've heard that Immanuel Kant was never paid, but left a bucket at the exit to the lecture theatre for students' contributions. This experience felt very much like that! 

All in all, I'm very glad I did it.

* a bit of background here, this is what the City of Edinburgh Council have been doing in Wester Hailes, a neighbourhood I work closely with. They basically tarmaced over areas of grass and shrubbery they couldn't be bothered maintaining. The Council say this was due to "community demands", but from what I hear the community demanded the spaces be tidied up and they were offered the opportunity to get some tarmac. It gets me so angry. The evidence is that this will literally shorten the lives of the people living around these areas. In terms of partnership working, I think the Council should be expected to fund local primary care for the increase in prescriptions of anti-depressants that will result. Further, the grass and plants are already growing through the tarmac and the trees are dying because they don't get enough water. And not to mention the increased flood risk. And this, after Scottish Enterprise spent hundreds in the 1990s putting in the landscaping in the first place! Luckily, the community is equally as angry and in some other neighbourhoods in Wester Hailes these areas are becoming community gardens.

I am not a horse

When I was in primary school, in creative writing classes, my teacher always told us to never used the word "nice" - there were far better more descriptives adjectives available. Alas, this lesson was not heeded by Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government came up with their latest "Nice Way Code" campaign. Yes, #racistvan may be the main social media policy getting a backlash in the UK, but up here we have our own fine mess.

I've held off commenting until the "policy" was launched in full, but for some reason they had a soft launch last week. As I pointed out at the time:

If you want to see the launch of a new policy go completely tits-up, check out @nicewaycode mentions: http://t.co/baPZVVkr28
— Peter Matthews (@urbaneprofessor) July 29, 2013

Truly a policy launch could not have gone any worse. First of all, their press photo showed a driver breaking the law by stopping over a stop-line. After a day of full-on attacks on twitter from cycling and road safety campaigners they were forced to write this blog post about all of us "vocal people". Pretty swiftly the spoof twitter account had more followers than the official one, and it's been joined by a second spoof account.

Well the policy has now had it's official launch today. It includes this leaflet and these adverts. There has been a helluva lot of verbiage on the policy, brilliantly brought together here. I would particularly recommend the posts by Beyond the Kerb on the ludicrous advert and make sure you read the comments on this post where some of the policy-makers try and defend it.

I pretty much agree with everything that's been said, so what I thought I'd do here is offer some speculative policy analysis here. I'm going to focus on two areas: problem definition and "lines to take".

Problem definition

A key step in policy-making is defining the problem to be solved. In "traditional" policy analysis this is presented as a fairly rational process. My own research often focuses on how problem definition is a highly political act, especially in neighbourhood policy. Invariably, regeneration policy (particularly in Scotland) fails to recognise the main reason deprived neighbourhoods exist is that we put all our social housing in certain neighbourhoods (an argument I'll be making in a Fringe show next week).

Quite often analysis doesn't have to be quite as in-depth as it is in my usual research. The Nice Way Code is a case in point. The policy problem is we don't have enough active travel in Scotland. The Scottish Government has a target to increase the number of journeys by bike to a pitiful 10%. There are a whole host of reasons why we want more active travel.

The evidence from countries with very high levels of cycling, and from studies that ask people who don't cycle, is that safety is the main barrier to promoting active transport. Our roads are designed for big metal boxes that go fast and cause massive blunt force trauma to people when they hit them, quite often resulting in death, particularly for children and older people. As I've said before on here, you've got to be bloody stupid to be a vehicular cyclist in Scotland.

However, the Nice Way Code defines a problem where nine cyclists have been killed by drivers on Scotland's road this year as "not perfect" and where we just have to be "nice". It doesn't take a genius to work out why there might be a bit of dissonance between problem definition and the experience of road users.

Being fed sugar lumps is not going to make me feel much better after my internal organs have been rearranged by being hit by a driver going 30 mpg or more. I am not a horse.

Lines to take

And this brings me onto lines to take. For those of you who have the fortune not to be former civil servants, a "line to take" is what the UK civil service comes up with when a new policy is announced. I was a civil servant and was trained to always revert to the "line to take" that way you won't get in trouble.

It's fairly clear what the "line to take" with the Nice Way Code is: "we know the road's aren't perfect, but they'll be better if we just get along". Subject to the barrage of criticism, they've had to come up with another line to take: "it's only 1% of the total budget". If you scroll down to the comments on this blog post by Nice Way Code, you'll see that I was a victim of the line to take. Interestingly it seems that they've now shut down comments, but just so you know, in response to their last comment to me, government can convert revenue expenditure to capital expenditure, and regularly does. It can't do it the other way round. The Scottish Government even tell you how much local government does this.

The problem with "lines to take" is really revealed by this policy. To get this problem, you have to know a bit about the UK civil service. In this book the political scientist Rod Rhodes uses ethnography to reveal how the hierarchy of the UK civil service means that ministerial office is like a Royal Court. This very much chimes with my experience of the Scottish Government. You are accountable to the Minister, not parliament. The minister is turn accountable to parliament. This is why "lines to take" are used - you cannot speak to the political and policy priorities of the government, all you can do is "objectively" implement them. So you fall back on your "line to take" so you don't actually have to have a view.

This means that once a policy has been decided (and often before) you cannot have a public discussion about the policy. It embeds the "decide and defend" approach in the policy process. As a result, it seems the Nice Way Code is in lock-down mode. It's only posting positive stories about the policy. It is no longer engaging in debate. Even comments on the videos on youtube have been locked down.

And what really frustrates me is it is an utter waste of money. I've put a ministerial correspondence in asking what research was used to come up with the campaign (I have an inkling it was a The Thick Of It style back-of-fag-packet job) and whether a cost-benefit-analysis was carried out, or similar. I await a reply. 

Like Beyond the Kerb, I do recognise that attitudes of road users have to change, but I was also expecting, hoping, for something like this Irish film:



Or, given the extent of the problem, even something hard-hitting like the Scottish Government can do:


Instead, I get a video which my partner excellently summed up as "so, they're asking drivers to treat cyclists that they see all the time, like something they hardly ever see and that they don't treat with respect". I am not a horse. I am a human being and I don't want to be killed by a blunt force trauma to my body. I want decent cycling infrastructure which I have seen implemented very cheaply and easily in Germany, and even better infrastructure in the Netherlands. The infrastructure has to come first to deliver modal shift.

The bit of the Nice Way Code blog post where they comment:

"A lot of research was conducted to develop the campaign, all of which told us keeping the tone light, speaking to all roads users equally and having messages for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians was the only way to get people to consider changing their own behaviour."

Is very telling for me. This has come straight from the stable of "nudge" policy. In an era of austerity, where politicians are terrified of taking bold decisions that might alienate voters (who are middle class and drive cars), policy "research" is reduced to PR not actually what works.

Modern design in Austria

If you'd not gathered from my previous post, I'm not long back from a holiday in Germany and Austria and I've been meaning to write this post for a while. Both countries were fantastic and the Bavarian bit of Germany was suitable littered with gorgeous Baroque churches and cuckoo-clock wooden farmhouses, but what was most striking about Austria was the absolutely stunning modern design, absolutely everywhere. We were not far from the city of Bregenz on the Bodensee/Lake Constance so we went there for a day trip. The historic square down near the lake is dominated by the brand new museum and the Kunsthaus, the latter designed by Peter Zumthor:

And that was the least of it. There was also this amazing ticket hall for the local ferry company (I particularly like how the white triangles painted on the glass look like sailing boats on the lake):



And the Festpielhaus where the annual opera on the lake is based is quite a striking building too. What I found particularly striking about these buildings was of course the stunning modern design, but mostly how, although they are striking and imposing, they are excessive and try to obliterate the rest of the urban form. They are just there as natural a part of the city as a medieval tenement block or a baroque chapel.

Now this modern design was not limited to Bregenz - we were staying in the rural hinterland, the Bregnezerwald - and every single little town or village had a substantial number of beautiful modern houses that just fitted in seamlessly to the countryside (just about).



Thanks to our very nice hotel we discovered part of the possible reason why there is all this beautiful modern design. The hotel had a fascinating history, but the essential part here is that each generation of the family who took it over did a massive refurbishment of it. The most recent was carried out by an amazing craft workers cooperative, the Werkraum Bregenzerwald. This is a collective of over 80 local crafts people who are just committed to Good Things: using local materials; keeping traditional crafts alive; training apprentices; and very good design. The hotel manager had basically employed the whole collective to refurbish the hotel and it was truly, heart-achingly beautiful, simple modern design. Basically the whole setup seems like a very good model for sustainable economic growth in a rural area - high value-added and local.

When we visited the Kuntshaus in Bregenz there just happened to be an exhibition of Peter Zumthor's architectural models, one of which happened to be of the Werkraum's showroom and work space in a wee town called Andelsbuch. Using the effortlessly well-timetabled and cheap Austrian buses, we got there on our last day. It was an amazing building:



Yet again though, in this wee town the fire station looked like this (note the green roof):



The town hall in a village that could not be bigger than somewhere like Callander, looked like this:



And even the bus stops are fantastically designed (although still replete with graffiti and vomit from the previous evening):



As a planner, the most depressing part of all this for reflecting on how badly we do things in the UK was when our bus back from Bregenz stopped outside a new development under construction:



This is mass-market rural housing, Austrian style. Note the striking modern design; the images of children and older people (not a smiling family in a car); if you zoom in on the image you can see the even more striking thing. These homes are built to Passivhaus standard, with photo-voltaics and batteries for energy storage. If only Barratt and Belway could build stuff like this in Edinburgh.

But, there's always a but. One thing did concern me. Most of this development did seem to be very new indeed. In fact much of it was just finished or barely complete. Reflecting this I pondered something a Dutch researcher explained to me about the Dutch economy. Basically the Netherlands has an almighty housing equity bubble that's on the very edge of bursting. There are many reasons for this, but one of them, it was explained to me, was that the Dutch joined the Euro with a relatively devalued currency (Guilder) compared to the Deutschmark (everything was given the strength of the German economy). This meant the Dutch economy looked artificially more productive than it actually is and this has produced a post-Euro boom in the economy. This has continued as the economy looks very productive compared to the peripheral Euro economies. I'm happy to be proved wrong on this, but this is my recollection of a conversation helped by some nice Dutch beer and bar snacks. Anyway, I was worried about whether the same is true in Austria and the economy is still artificially inflated and there's a property boom waiting to burst. To be sure, there was much more new, private, development in Austria than Germany. Can anyone else enlighten me?

Anyway, if you want to see more photos of the striking modern design, I've put them all into one set on Flickr.

I DID attend a consultation event

This morning I was right riled up by ever excellent reporting by Greener Leith to do a big ranty pro-cycling, cycling infrastructure blog post about the state of Leith Walk. After all, the day of the Ghost Bike protest at the Scottish Parliament, cyclist deaths on Scotland's roads were very sadly increased to the same number as last year, and we still have five months to go. And the BBC (and other media) still use shorthand headlines like "Cyclist dies in collision with car" - those amazing driverless cars we have in Scotland now. No, the cyclist died being hit by a driver. Leith Walk at the moment is so bad it's a road I never cycle down. It's not just bad at the moment for cyclist. On buses, the road is so potholed it actually hurts to be a passenger. On the pavement, loads of flagstones are loose and many have been replaced with awful looking bits of tarmac.

Anyhow, instead of ranting into my blog, I decided to attend a consultation event run by the Council this evening at a local library. I was actually really impressed. First of all, it has to be said, the plans are in no way perfect, but they are a massive improvement on how the road is or has been. The other really good thing was chatting to the officers they were also massively ambitious and open to new ideas. They genuinely wanted to co-produce a fantastic new space in the city.

Specific very positive things for me were:

• Zebra crossings! Lots of them! I presumed roads engineers in the UK had forgotten how to paint black and white lines on roads that make cars go slow.
• Some good cycling provision, including a long section of grade-separated path.

Things I had question marks about were firstly planting - the plans did not fully detail what planting would be (re)introduced (the trees they ripped up for the trams were getting to a nice stage of maturity. It was explained that there would be trees where there could be, but because of the utility diversion work because of the tram (which is why we're in this mess) there is limited space for planting. However, they are keen to put flower beds along the road and to have these as community-managed space, hopefully like London's new edible bus stops and I had a great conversation with one of the officers about the possibility of retro-fitting sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDs) during the renovation, like Portland has done so fantastically well. 

Secondly, I do think that non-motorised transport should be prioritised right down the road. That means in the narrow bits not ditching the segregated cycle paths, but ditching the road space and making cars wait - like they do in the Netherlands. When I asked about this, the reason given for not doing this is they don't want to make it so difficult to drive down that Bonnington Road and Easter Road end up overwhelmed, and they don't want a modal shift away from buses if they become too slow. I can see why they have these concerns - Leith Walk is a major bus route to the north of the city and also a major distributor in the road hierarchy. But why be so cautious? Why not just prioritise pedestrians and cyclists over other modes and see what happens? If surrounding roads get too busy, then invest in them in the next wave of road improvements. The Netherlands and Denmark (see slides in particular) got their cycling infrastructure N.B. the tense. It didn't magically appear overnight. It took decades of investment and improvement and they continue this improvement today. Making Leith Walk a truly road for pedestrians and cyclists would be a fantastic start to making Edinburgh a city designed for sustainable transport.

Thirdly, the top and bottom of Leith Walk at the moment are just blank spaces. At the southern end (the top) the proposed (or even better, the more improved) cycle paths do need to be linked up to decent east-west grade-separated cycle paths across the city centre. Hopefully the plans for the city centre will go some way towards that. At the Foot of the Walk the Council need to stick to their guns and go for a proper shared space to improve the town centre. The traffic will already be slowed greatly by the plans as they stand. There is no reason why they can't go for a really nicely designed shared space.

Finally, the other constraint that was raised was, of course, money. I don't get this fully myself. Even the basic plans mean basically digging up the entire road and relaying it - surely relaying the pavements slightly bigger or smaller and painting markings a bit differently on the road can't cost that much more? Also, as I mentioned to an officer as I left, perhaps they could ask the Scottish Government to spend some of the £400k that's being pointlessly wasted on the utterly non-evidence based "Mutual Respect" campaign? Or even some of the £3bn making us more car dependent dualing the A9?

It was striking cycling in Germany on a very recent holiday. The Germans do have good cycling infrastructure and some absolutely superb shared spaces (including 10km/h zones). But the cycling infrastructure in particular is not up to Dutch or Danish standards - it's much more pragmatic. The German's will happily send you off on a slightly round-about trip down a quiet suburban road to keep you away from a main road. But they still work because of simple things - they're very well signposted and joined-up; you're not dumped at the end of one wondering what to do, they'll be a very clear white a green signpost telling you your various options. It's even the simple things like this we get so wrong in the UK.

I want to end on another positive point. I was very impressed by the consultation event - it is clear Edinburgh Council are keen to engage and want to get people's views. It wasn't perfect community engagement by any means, but they are trying. And just like the plans themselves, this is a massive improvement on what's happened before.

I just wanted to add another point to this that I couldn't do last night because my interwebs stopped working. My mum, aged 65, learnt to ride a bike this year. She sent me a wonderful photo of her wobbling down a path in a park helped by her instructor. She's not a confident cyclist and could never go out on Britain's roads at the moment. What struck me in Germany was that in all the small Bavarian towns we passed through it was exactly people like my mum who used the bike - because it was cheap and convenient for short journeys. People exactly like my mum, and even older, would happily cycle along a mandatory cycle lane, shove their hand out left, wobble a lot and then veer across the road in front of the traffic to turn without a care in the World. Coming back from holiday, I thought I'd use my fitness to cycle into work (at the moment I take the train in, because it's uphill all the way). Even as a very confident vehicular cyclist the main thing that stops me now is the knowledge of all the dangerous right hand turns I would have to do to get from Leith, through the city centre to Dalry. 

Getting off the train at Edinburgh Park to come out to the Riccarton Campus here I can use off-road cycle path just about all the way. It is very striking that in the opposite direction, every day, I'm passed by about ten other cyclists happily and confidently cycling to work in Edinburgh Park and South Gyle. This is the difference that safe cycling infrastructure.

I want people like my mum to be cycling in Edinburgh. I want a mother of a four-year-old who goes to Lorne Primary to feel confident she can cycle up Leith Walk with her kid on a wee bike tootling behind her. The proposals for Leith Walk are an improvement, but they can be so much better.

I'm an atheist who goes to church...

The other title for this post could have been "Retreat!" but that made it sound a bit militaristic and futile.

So yes, I'm an atheist who goes to church. This proper Scottish Episcopalian Church -  St John's, Edinburgh. None of this atheist church nonsense. I was brought up an atheist, I've never been baptised as my grandmother on one side was excommunicated by the Catholic church for marrying a protestant (the bell tolled for her soul and the bible was slammed shut) and on the other side the view was "we're living in absolute destitution and all you offer is platitudes".

St John's is a fantastic church. I started attending because my partner sings in the choir and as I'm a lazy sod I only ever to make it for Evensong on a Sunday (followed by beer and chips with said choir). If you've never been to a traditional Anglican Evensong, go - although watch out because a lot of choirs take July or August off. The settings of the responses and canticles are always nice (I'm always stunned by the words to the Magnificat) and very meditative; you get to say the Apostles Creed, which is better than the Nicene creed, and with a lot of luck you won't have to sit through a sermon.

At St John's you will have to. Or a "reflection on the readings" at least. You can stare at the beautiful stained glass windows if you want during it; or note that the painting of Jesus on the altarpiece looks oddly like he's holding a bendy straw (he's now colloquially known as the "Blessed Christ of the Bendy Straw") or do what the choir do and read a book or play candy crush saga. Given I'm usually one of about ten members of the congregation, I feel it's rude not to look like I'm listening. And often I do listen. Those ten minutes of someone talking to you about the nature of humankind or asking big questions like "what is justice?", "what is truth?", "how do we know?" "how do we create a peaceful World?", "what would the terrified 14-year-old Mary have felt like when she found out she was pregnant?". In our busy lives it's not very often we take the time to think deep thoughts like this. Or if your mind isn't captured by the sermon, even ten minutes of contemplative thought staring at very beautiful things.

It's this aspect of militant atheism that really angers me - that somehow church attendance and faith is an easy cop-out - that it provides "simple" explanations for life. I can't say anything that's ever been said to me in church has been simple or easy to understand. In fact being deeply, intellectually challenged is why I keep going. Oh, and the music is very good too.

Anyway, this isn't the main focus of what I wanted to say on this post. Through this non-religious conversation I've become good friends with a number of clergy. A central part of clergy life is going on regular "retreats". Often these are in silence. Contemplative weekends away from the church and congregation that allow some deep thought and emotional sorting out to be done.

After the week I've had preparing for the AHRC Connected Communities Showcase and doing a lot of work on a very exciting new undergraduate programme, I really envy the idea of retreat. Although, that's the thing - retreats are definitely not holidays. When I talk to my friends about their retreats, they usually sound refreshed, but often the intellectual work of sitting, walking and thinking is hard work for them. And even with bracketing and controlling my time as much as I can I still don't feel I get that long time to think and really exercise my brain and extend thoughts to logical conclusions that are offering new insights. If I set time aside in big blocks it's usually writing time as this also requires big, long, uninterrupted stretches of focused time.

Most importantly, retreats are part of your working life as a cleric and improve your pastoral role and theology. Because of this, I think academia could do with instigating the retreat as a common practice. I know many academics set aside a week or so as a "writing retreat", but this is still different from the retreat concept as I've encountered among my clergy friends. Similarly, we have the research sabbatical, but the out-of-office emails along the lines of "I'm on sabbatical, so it may take me longer to reply to emails" really demonstrates how academia's working culture stops people tuning out completely and thinking more deeply.

One thing I find very odd, particularly in the UK, is that the retreat is so central a part of clergy life yet is not part of academia. I find this odd as the UK's universities, especially in England, were so intimately tied to church life. Before the reformation the ancient colleges and universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Saint Andrews) were essentially a cross between priories and seminaries. After the reformation they became sort of seminaries, preparing people for the priesthood or other professions, and it's striking that right up until the late nineteenth century a lot of Cambridge science profs were "The Reverend...". And we mustn't forget the University of Durham was created by the CofE in a panic to try and halt the rise of non-conformism. Some of the vestiges of this remain - we still wear medieval monks garb for graduation ceremonies. The fights over the cellular office and (quite right) opposition to open-plan offices demonstrates how academia still holds to a model of a monkish eremitic working life (as well as a concern about the privacy of distressed students). But we've lost, or perhaps never gained, the concept of the retreat. 

Like many academics I suspect, I use conference travel - particularly thinking time on trains - as a sort of retreat. It's not proper retreat though. It's not in a location designed for retreat, secluded from the World, quiet, with nourishment (intellectual and nutritious) provided at a low cost. I think adding a few sessions of retreat into the standard academic contract could really help. Although the problem is with that is we'd be adding to the absenteeism that is already a problem in universities.

A wee quick edit. Over on twitter I'm getting a couple of suggestions for reading for atheist church-goers. So, I thought on here I'd mention this book: Liberation Theology and Sexuality, by a former congregation member of St John's. It's an amazing book and well worth a read if you're interested in why religion can be challenging and revealing even if you are an atheist.