If you live in Britain – and if you don’t, I sort of envy you right now – you’ll know that it’s a pretty torrid time in politics right now. Next Thursday, there’s a referendum to determine whether the UK should remain a member of the European Union.
So, since migration to cities is this week’s theme – and since it’s, frankly, about all we can think about right now – Barbara and I begin this week’s episode by talking about that referendum, and why cities so often have a more international outlook than their hinterlands.
This week, you can also hear:
- Emmanuel Akinwotu on how Lagos has coped with ballooning from a city of 1m, to one of 20m, in under half a century. You can a selection of Emmanuel’s writing for us here.
- Olivia Cuthbert on her experiences visiting Za’atari, the refugee camp that’s rapidly solidifying into Jordan’s fourth largest city. You can read her – frankly quite magnificent – piece on the camp here.
- Lyman Stone, an agricultural economist for the US government, on life in the city Americans love to hate, Washington DC. (In another life, Lyman is one half of a great US history podcast, Migration Nation. It’s brilliant, so you should all subscribe to it.)
Finally, our map of the week – which, I’ll be honest, we do no justice to whatsoever – is this magnificent piece of work by Duncan Smith of UCL’s Centre for Advanced spatial Analysis. It shows, at a glance, the growth of all the world’s major cities over the past 60 years.
Click to expand.
You can read more about that map here.
You can listen to the episode below. You can also subscribe on Acast, iTunes, or RSS.
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