EdgeNotes

EdgeNotes

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City feelings

To understand, and act effectively within, the city, we need multi-level empirical research: macro-analyses of statistics, figures, and algorithms; and micro-studies, from interviews and focus groups.      Steve Latham   These require integrating in a cybernetic approach to the city’s many systems: business, the arts, education, and politics. And […]

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The end of globalisation

Despite its wars (Bosnia, Rwanda), the 1990s seem, in retrospect, to have been a time of optimism and hope.   Steve Latham   As the new millennium dawned, it seemed that liberal, and neo-liberal, dreams of a one-world, globalised and democratic system, might spread throughout the planet. How far away […]

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Covid’s civilisational crisis

Two years ago, our kids bought my wife the board-game, “Pandemic”, for Christmas. We played it several times. But now, it appears all-too-real.   Steve Latham   It seems only recently that scientists were debating whether to label our era as the ‘Anthropocene’, in recognition of the devastation our species […]

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The great disconnect

Warren Buffet, the US investment guru, has apparently withdrawn all his investments in airlines. In addition, Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic is removing all its flights from Gatwick Airport.   Steve Latham   What does this portend for the future of air-travel? While it may be good for climate change, in […]

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Memories of my grandma

My grandma was the condensation of the zeitgeist in personal form. Certainly, in Lancashire, the cotton industry was concretised physically through the textile factories dominating the Irwell valley.   Steve Latham   The chimneys of Blake’s ‘dark satanic mills’, Lowry’s grey-brown townscapes peopled with ‘match men and matchstick cats and […]