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.
