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Society

Essays and videos on social issues, history, political life and the future
Great art cities explained: New York | Aeon
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Art

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

15 minutes

Nubia Way | Aeon
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Cities

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

21 minutes

Life as a Victorian teenager | Aeon
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History

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

10 minutes

Here’s to the aquapolis | Aeon
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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

Are they the canaries? | Aeon
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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

Living closer together | Aeon
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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

The haunted city | Aeon
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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

Nine letters | Aeon
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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

Energised crowding | Aeon
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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

Virtual ancient Rome: walking from the Colosseum to the Forum | Aeon
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The ancient world

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

9 minutes

The Bombay highway code | Aeon
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Travel

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

5 minutes

Uncovering Sparta | Aeon
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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

How we became weekly | Aeon
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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

Cities that grow themselves | Aeon
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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

EXCLUSIVEStreet angel | Aeon
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Race and ethnicity

Seeking authenticity in a Chinatown built for tourists and Hollywood movies

23 minutes

Heritage at sea | Aeon
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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

Serial parallels | Aeon
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Architecture

A whirlwind tour of Hong Kong’s high-rises is an awesome meditation on urbanity

9 minutes

EXCLUSIVEBubble | Aeon
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Subcultures

What do tropical fish make of the strange creatures who love them so?

14 minutes

Organism | Aeon
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Cities

The city as an emergent life form, with architecture as the skeleton and roads as veins

19 minutes

A city but not upon a hill | Aeon
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Cities

A city but not upon a hill

Entangled with, yet critical of, colonial oppression and the evils of slavery, the true history of Boston can now be told

Mark Peterson

The artefact artist | Aeon
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Archaeology

New York’s 300-year-old trash becomes treasure in the hands of an urban archaeologist

23 minutes

Unreal city | Aeon
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Technology and the self

How an augmented reality app transformed London into an immersive art gallery

6 minutes

The harms of gentrification | Aeon
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Cities

The harms of gentrification

The exclusion of poorer people from their own neighbourhoods is not just a social problem but a philosophical one

Daniel Putnam

Sociology’s race problem | Aeon
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Race and ethnicity

Sociology’s race problem

Urban ethnographers do more harm than good in speaking for Black communities. They see only suffering, not diversity or joy

Robyn Autry