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Society

Essays and videos on social issues, history, political life and the future
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Cities

A lush, whirlwind tribute to the diversity of life in a northern English county

3 minutes

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Art

‘If you’re creative, why can’t you create a solution?’ One artist’s imaginative activism

17 minutes

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Fairness and equality

A tragicomic account of how the Los Angeles Police Department blew up a city block

19 minutes

A figure is silhouetted in an older style apartment block window at night. In the distance are taller modern tower block apartments
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Cities

The haunting of modern China

In Nanjing, Hong Kong and other Chinese cities, rapid urbanisation is multiplying a fear of death and belief in ghosts

Andrew Kipnis

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Cities

Sick city

My dad grew up in Robert Moses’s New York City. His story is a testament to how urban planning shapes countless lives

Katie Mulkowsky

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Cities

The rise and fall of Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong’s infamous urban monolith

18 minutes

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Film and visual culture

Exposed

Slum photography was at the heart of progressive campaigns against urban poverty. And it was a weapon against poor people

Sadie Levy Gale

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Design and fashion

The art of Istanbul dances to life in a tribute to the city’s timeless beauty

4 minutes

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Art

The female Abstract Expressionists of New York shook the world of art

15 minutes

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Cities

Inside the unique London community built by residents to defy housing discrimination

21 minutes

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History

From manners to mud – two women recall coming of age in Victorian London

10 minutes

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The environment

Here’s to the aquapolis

Unkempt, beguiling and lacking conventional geometry, wetlands bring a roguish, raffish wildness to the city

Tom Blass

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Illness and disease

Are they the canaries?

People with multiple chemical sensitivity seem to be allergic to the world. What, if anything, can medicine do for them?

Xi Chen

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Cities

Living closer together

Urban density was once seen as a sign of unhealthiness and poverty. But today it is necessary to make cities sustainable

Max Holleran

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Cities

The haunted city

The city, for all its mechanical speed, artificial light and industrialisation, is the most uncanny of human habitats

Azania Imtiaz Khatri-Patel

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Mood and emotion

A century of letters captures the emotions of life in a new city, far from home

21 minutes

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Cities

Energised crowding

To understand why early cities thrived, look not to the temples of kings but to their subjects’ bustling neighbourhoods

Michael E Smith

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The ancient world

Walk like a Roman in this digital reconstruction of the ancient city

9 minutes

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Travel

A postcard from Mumbai, where there’s poetry in getting from A to B

5 minutes

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The ancient world

Uncovering Sparta

Mythological home of Helen, war-making polis of Leonidas and now a modest municipality: the city is a palimpsest

Daphne D. Martin

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Economic history

How we became weekly

The week is the most artificial and recent of our time counts yet it’s impossible to imagine our shared lives without it

David Henkin

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Cities

Cities that grow themselves

They are spreading like branching plants across the globe. Should we rein cities in or embrace their biomorphic potential?

Josh Berson

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Race and ethnicity

Seeking authenticity in a Chinatown built for tourists and Hollywood movies

23 minutes

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Architecture

Heritage at sea

Must we simply accept the loss of beloved buildings and cities to the floods and rising seas of the climate crisis?

Thijs Weststeijn