One fascinating paper shows that crime rates are also strongly affected by vegetation. In housing projects in Chicago with equal levels of poverty, taking account of factors such as size of buildings and vacancy rates, there's a clear association between the absence of greenery and both property crime and violent crime.

Another set of studies demonstrates a relationship between urban planning and body mass index. Where settlements are dense – and therefore able to support public transport – and close to shops, workplaces and recreation places, people are more likely to walk and cycle and less likely to be fat. One paper shows that women living in mixed places, where houses and amenities are close together, have a risk of coronary heart disease 20% lower than women living in areas which contain only houses. Suburban sprawl is partly to blame for obesity. (The references for all these papers are on my website).

Build loose suburbs carved up by busy roads and without green spaces and you help to create a population of fat, lonely people plagued by criminals. Build dense, leafy settlements with mixed uses, protected from traffic, and you help to create safe, fit and friendly communities.

This is a great opinion piece on how urban planning affects our lives. It reminds me of one of the patterns in Alexander's "A Pattern Language" book: City - Country Fingers, talking of the need for green space in urban environments.

Hmm, where to live? Where to live?

Great tips on how to present to VCs (and anyone else).

It's one frontier, but not the only one. The more socialization of technology, and the more data it produces, though, the more we will need better visualization and navigation tools.

Coolio's. The theme for this year: HTML5!

The secret to longevity, as I see it, has less to do with diet, or even exercise, and more to do with the environment in which a person lives: social and physical. What do I mean by this? They live rewardingly inconvenient lives. They walk to the store and to their friends' homes and they live in houses set up with opportunities to move mindlessly. They do their own yard work, hand-knead their own bread dough, and, in the case of Okinawa, get up and down off the floor several dozen times a day.

A good reminder of good habits for us all to reinforce in this new year.

Awesome stuff from #citycamp. Wish this boy had crashed it, but biz travel during the week and sick kids over the weekend kept me away.

Dave Gray's reading list

A lot of people have asked me to recommend books on visual thinking, visual learning, the brain, business, etc., so I have compiled this list. I've added a brief note to each book so you can see why I think it's important.

This isn't an exhaustive list, but I try to add to it whenever I have a moment.

Though my wallet is regretting my ever having found this page. I own a bunch of these books already, but there are dozens of great recommendations for everything from drawing with kids to project management to the cognitive theory behind visual thinking. It's an awesome collection.

Thanks, DG!

There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour.

The past few years have been crazy and hectic for me professionally in leading at Fuzzy Math and personally as our second daughter was born.

I find myself on a schedule like Graham describes, with long blocks of time unpunctuated by interruptions only coming late at night. It worked for Graham because he could sleep in. You can't do that with a finicky newborn and a daughter in kindergarten, meaning those late nights charge a brutal fee the next morning.

I have always been a do-aholic, but not a workaholic. What I mean by that is that I don't like grinding on one set of problems all day, every day, but I do enjoy keeping really busy. My dad is the same way. Like him, I've always had a main project and several side projects, hobbies or whatnots to keep me busy.

This past year, with family and FM, only was about those things, and I had precious little creative time. It showed in everything: my work, my attitude, my health.

Well, I'm done accepting the status quo for my life, since when I do the things I'm more passionate about, good things tend to happen, though they are less quantifiable than many other more tangible short term benefits. More on that in a bit.