Very much enjoyed this piece in the latest @WorksInProgMag about how Alberta became a rat-free sanctuary and the only significant human-inhabited place on earth that is free of them. Excellent "you can just do things" energy. "William Lobay, a crop protection supervisor at the Alberta Department of Agriculture, came up with the idea of a buffer zone focused on the area of prairie and parkland that was most vulnerable to penetration. In late 1950, Albertan officials approved his Rat Control Zone, a roughly 600-by-29-kilometer strip along the part of its eastern border with Saskatchewan. In the zone, William Lobay and his colleagues surveyed cargo and vehicles that entered the province, and inspected vulnerable sites like farms, grain elevators, feed stacks, barns, sheds, and abandoned buildings, where food and shelter made rat establishment most likely." worksinprogress.co/issue/alb…

I was surprised to learn rats aren’t native to North America — they came in on ships with European traders Fun visual from my upcoming @WorksInProgMag article on how Alberta eliminated rats, out online this week

Just outside downtown Vancouver, the Squamish Nation is building one of the most remarkable housing projects in the world: Senakw, which will eventually house 9,000 people. Because it's on First Nations reserve land, Senakw is being built without zoning rules, height limits, parking minimums, or extended public consultations. The only thing they kept was Vancouver's safety standards. worksinprogress.co/issue/how… - The project singlehandedly accounts for 7% of the entire city's new housing between now and 2033. - It's expected to generate around C$10 billion in total income, equivalent to more than two million dollars per member of the Squamish Nation. - The Squamish people approved the project in two referendums that passed with landslide support. Apart from just being really cool, Senakw shows two things that have wider relevance for getting things built. The first is that microdemocracy can deliver support for development if the decisionmakers will benefit from it. This is one example of many that devolving decisions *down* can work at least as well as moving them *up* to higher levels of government. The second is that microdemocracy can bring wider legitimacy. Vancouver's city government *could* have blocked Senakw if it had tried – it is notoriously sceptical of projects like this. The fact that it actually supported the project may show that local self-government can deliver upzoning that has the consent of the wider community, without the need for 'stakeholder consultations'. The fact that the Squamish are a First Nations group does complicate this, though. The story of how Senakw got built is pretty incredible, since much of the Squamish people's 20th Century was spent fighting to get land back that had been confiscated from them illegally in 1913. It was thanks to one Squamish elder (the "Keeper of the Names") and Catholic church records that their property was restored to them. Read the story of Senakw now at Works in Progress, and in our new print issue, arriving at subscribers' doors this week.

Had a whale of a time talking about the art direction and design of @WorksInProgMag at our most recent subscriber-only event in NYC this Monday. Thrilled to get to talk about serif fonts, cannibalism and Bronzino. Thank you so much to everyone who came along!

Nineteenth-century cities grew much faster than modern Western ones. Some grew a hundredfold or even a thousandfold in a century. And on the whole, they did a better job of it than we do. @Aria_Babu, @bswud and I discuss the rise and fall of the liberal city. We talk about: - Why American towns were so much less dense than European ones, even before modern transport technology; - How Thatcher would have done privatisation differently if she had studied the Victorians; - When the Victorians opted for Stalinist-style central planning, and when for carnivorous laissez-faire. And why they were right in both cases; - Why East Coast cities are surrounded by forests, not agricultural land; - How the expansion of Nottingham was blocked by the 'cowocracy', a cabal of cow farmers who paralysed the city and caused rampant overcrowding; - How price controls and inflation wrecked Western public transport, and how they would have done so even without the rise of the car; - How Victorian local governments behaved like private companies owned by local ratepayers, and why this was mostly a good thing.

Premodern societies tended to be rent by terrible wars. In the early modern period, tens of millions died in wars in Europe, India and China. Just one society found a kind of solution: Japan. Between 1603 and 1853, Japan enjoyed near-perfect peace. The ruling Tokugawa family achieved this through creating what might be seen as the largest prison in the history of the world, the city of Edo (modern Tokyo). worksinprogress.co/issue/sam… Most of Japan was governed by about 260 nobles, called ‘daimyo’ (see first map). To secure their loyalty, the government required that the daimyo leave their families permanently in Edo, essentially as hostages to the state. Most daimyo women thus never saw the domains over which their husbands and sons ruled. The daimyo were also required to alternate years in Edo personally. The result was that most of the surface area of Edo was given over to daimyo palaces, or to accommodation for the hundreds of thousands of samurai retainers they brought with them (see second map). This was arranged through an elaborate zoning system, probably the largest use of zoning before modern times. Edo was extraordinarily top-heavy socially: about half of its population were samurai. Samurai were theoretically a warrior class, but since Japan was at peace, they did little real work apart from gentlemanly occupations like calligraphy. Their main income came in the form of tiny hereditary stipends from their daimyos or the government. These stipends were fixed in perpetuity around 1600, declining gradually with inflation over the next quarter of a millennium. Most samurai thus lived in dignified but extreme poverty, their income determined by the favour in which one of their ancestors had stood centuries earlier. The commoner population was also tightly controlled. Commoner Edo was divided into some 1,500-2,000 fenced and gated blocks. These were then subdivided into gated alleys lined with small houses (see third map). The Low City was thus divided up by tens of thousands of internal checkpoints, all of which closed at night. Edo was not under threat of attack in the Tokugawa period and the city as a whole was not fortified. The purpose of this immense labyrinth of walls and gates was to control and monitor the movement of the population. Prisons are useful things, and the Tokugawa system was a kind of success, making Japan the most peaceful society on earth. But it is also a disconcerting reminder of the power of rent-seekers, and how a whole city can be warped by the political exigencies they create. Edo is a particularly striking case of this, but it is far from alone.

TIL: The world's largest city in 1700 was a purpose-built prison for Samurai.

Finally framed my first Bargue drawing - L'Inconnue de la Seine or Ma Wee Chérie Can you believe I drew this with A PENCIL?!?

There are some articles one shares or thinks about again and again, because the ideas or information they contain are so startling, or useful, or both. Here are five that fall into that category for me: 1. The Gossip Trap - Erik Hoel. Modern humans have been around for 200,000 years, so why did civilisation begin only 10,000 years ago? Why did we waste so much time? theintrinsicperspective.com/… 2. The Teratogenic Grid - Holt N. Parker, in Roman Sexualities. The Romans didn't have a concept of heterosexuality or homosexuality. How did they view sex? Very NSFW. uvm.edu/~jbailly/courses/11P… 3. The Nerd as the Norm - John Nerst. You know what a nerd is, but what's a wamb? A useful new term is coined. everythingstudies.com/2017/1… 4. We're not going to run out of new anatomy anytime soon - Matt Wedel. Human anatomy is an unknown frontier to a deliriously exciting extent: for example, there's a ligament in the knee that we only realised is present in most people in 2012. svpow.com/2024/09/07/were-no… 5. Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account - Gerry Mackie. Female footbinding endured for a thousand years in China, and then ended in a single generation. How do we end horrible practices with high defection costs? jstor.org/stable/2096305

Articles we would like to commission at Works in Progress. Could you write one? worksinprogress.news/p/more-…

do these people want gifted designers locked in sweatshops making Mao suits? should beautiful clothes be made for display, never to be worn? the Met Gala is functionally a privately funded art show, and paying for extravagant artistry is one of the most virtuous uses of wealth!

Is there a company that does cheap copies of public domain furniture designs? And if not, why? Who wouldn’t want a Frankl Skyscraper desk (1925).

you’re on Very thick ice with me . i love you

Most houses built in Britain, America, Germany, France, and around much of the world, are built in a vaguely traditional-vernacular style. But nearly all public buildings have been built in a modernist style for almost 100 years. This is as true of churches as it is of secular buildings. Hindu India, and the Hindu Indian diaspora around the world, provides a striking contrast to this development. As time has gone on, Hindu religious architecture has gotten more ornate and elaborate. As such, it forms a 'living tradition', stretching back thousands of years. I remember how impressed I was visiting Neasden Temple in my schooldays. And there are dozens of these around the world at even greater scale! Check out @TilakParekh's article in the latest issue of Works in Progress.

On 19 May I am going to be in Berlin, my onetime home city, discussing European housing and transport policy with @AnyaM8_, @FraukeStehr and @DominikWKH. All are welcome to join, and we hope to make many new friends interested in the future of European cities. luma.com/bdc8as5a