Issues

Sunrise coast

Salento, at the very farthest point of Italy’s heel, has long been a relatively isolated landing point for people from across the Mediterranean: many of whom have left their mark on its rugged culture and cuisine. There’s also something about Salento that seems to capture visitors’ imagination and lend itself to dream of putting down more permanent roots.

The landscape is a dramatic mix of azure waters and craggy cliffs, and even the dwellings themselves seem spawned from fantasy – clustered towns of dazzling limewashed buildings or sun-bleached pastel hues to the blocky limestone masserie (farmhouses). That’s before visitors spot the ancient-looking trulli (stone huts with coned roofs) or pajare (stout pyramids) like Mayan temples. Then there are the many quiet beaches, restaurants and places to take a dip.

Our three-day journey takes in the best of the remote region, from the Adriatic Sea at the east, circling through the nethermost edge – “De Finibus Terrae” (“End of the Earth”), as the Romans called it – and to the Ionian sea at the west. Andiamo!

Day 1: Lecce and the Adriatic coast

Lecce, one of Puglia’s biggest cities, has a shade under 100,000 souls but enough bisque-coloured baroque stone edifices to more than justify its moniker of the “Florence of the South”. The city has recently become a favourite of tourists but locals still pace the old city centre with a gelato from Pasticceria Natale (served with roasted almonds) or a béchamel-and-mozzarella pastry from Bar Cotognata Leccese. Those in the know stop in Caffè Alvino for a cream-filled pasticciotto pastry and a caffè leccese: coffee served on ice with almond milk (a long-standing rather than a hipster touch here). At Trattoria Le Zie, the second-generation business that started in the owners’ living room in 1966 continues to turn out rustic Pugliese classics including ciceri e trie (chickpeas with fresh and fried pasta). Artisans still occupy some of the storefronts, including Nassi Lamps, where a team handcrafts contemporary and custom lampshades, and Ijò Design, where architect-turned-weaver Annalisa Surace makes fabrics on a 19th-century loom. Her next project? Staff uniforms at the area’s newest city-centre draw: Palazzo Luce.

“I wasn’t looking to buy a palazzo,” says Anna Maria Enselmi, Palazzo Luce’s founder. “Someone brought me to see this place and I fell in love.” From there, Enselmi dreamed up her own architecture project, transforming the 14th-century palazzo of an aristocratic family into a hotel and space to house her collection of design and art.

Alongside Nina Yashar, the doyenne behind Milan’s Nilufar gallery, Enselmi enlisted the help of the gallerists Lia Rumma and Rossella Colombari, and a network of Italian design talents including Storage Milano, Giuliano Andrea Dell’Uva Architetti and Martino Gamper to decorate the space. Gamper contributed various custom pieces and the hotel’s bar, finished with fragments of green and white linoleum. Guests will also spot furnishings from Carlo Mollino, Franco Albini, Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Osvaldo Borsani and Ettore Sottsass alongside photos by Marina Abramovic and Vanessa Beecroft, in addition to a vast rug by Joseph Kosuth covering the music room.

Enselmi’s mania for all things Gio Ponti includes headboards, shelves, painted-yellow floor tiles, Superleggera chairs and pink and moss-green porcelain toilets, with matching bathroom fixtures. Enselmi eyes a lacquered wood table by Ponti with concern. “I hope that no one ever puts a hot cup on here,” she says. “But I think guests will be respectful of the specialness of the place.” Her worry is understandable: Palazzo Luce is not like other hotels and made for the wear and tear of strangers. It’s a temple to Enselmi’s passions that she entrusts, rather than rents, to visitors.

Enselmi, who is of Pugliese descent and lives in Milan, explains that it was her “philosophy to maintain as much as possible of what remained here”: fishbone cotto floors, hand-painted majolica tiles, carved wooden doors painted with dainty flowers and other remnants of its 700 years of life. “I wanted a place for contemporary art and design, but with a soul and a past — a place specific to Puglia that could never exist in New York or London,” she says. What better place to rest for the night?

Day 2: De Finibus Terrae — the eastern Adriatic coast

Leaving Palazzo Luce, we head along the rocky Adriatic shoreline for Salento’s sunrise coast. At Grotta della Poesia, half an hour southeast of the city, the waves have carved a perfect pool into the low cliffs of pale stone. A few kilometres further down, the long scythe of sand of Torre dell’Orso is flanked by a lighthouse at either edge and dense copses of umbrella pines at its back — a beautiful but crowded beach in high summer, when locals tell me that they opt for more secluded coves nearby. At the Torre Sant’Andrea, the faraglioni, or sea stacks whittled by the rough waters into curving towers of rock, are a humbling sight to behold — a graceful and wave-racked ode to the elements.

Almost at the very tip of Salento in Gagliano del Capo, the hotel Palazzo Daniele sits so far down the Adriatic coast that when Monocle steps out of the car, the phone signal says we’re in Greece. In the sleepy town with arcaded houses worthy of a De Chirico painting, a church procession passes, the priest carrying a purple-wrapped cross. The door to Palazzo Daniele swings open to reveal a double courtyard of high arches, leading to a raised orangery.

Operated by Gabriele Salini’s GS Collection, Palazzo Daniele is owned by Francesco Petrucci, whose family built the structure in 1861. The palazzo is all frescoes overhead and mosaics underfoot. Antiques and contemporary design are dotted around the otherwise spartan space planned by Palomba Serafini Associati, which kept original details intact for the conversion into a serene 11-room hotel. The duo saw potential in the old architecture for a historical yet contemporary getaway distinct from more anaesthetised luxury travel. “Occasionally someone complains that the bathroom door squeaks,” says Roberto Rizzo, the house manager and one-man welcoming committee at Palazzo Daniele. “Then we know this place is not for them. Today, true luxury is about preserving the patina of time.”

The open kitchen encourages guests to saunter in, say hello and even make requests, homestyle. As Monocle passes, the cook offers a slice of just-baked bread before suggesting a bowl of her mussels and some sparkling natural wine. “Industry and wealth are still concentrated in the north of Italy,” says Rizzo, popping the cork. “But to live well you have to come to the south.”

Just beyond Palazzo Daniele, a pathway fringed by towering precipices leads to the coast and to Ponte Ciolo, a narrow but dramatic rocky beach in between cliffs giving onto twinkling topaz-coloured water. Part of a network of newly linked hiking trails called the Cammino del Salento, stairs lead to a myrtle-lined path above a beach that follows the entire southeast coast to Otranto, past remnants of ancient dry-rock farm walls on one side, with the Adriatic stretching out on the other.

The nearby town centre and marina of postcard-pretty Tricase has become the liveliest area along this part of the coast. Caffè d’Oltremare, a recently opened bar in a small pink castle built in 1890, serves drinks to sunset-hunters on a terrace high above the port. Down the street, Taverna del Porto has become one of Salento’s best restaurants, designed like an old-school fishmonger and serving superbly rendered seafood dishes and natural wine. In Tricase’s centre, where sulphur-coloured streetlights illuminate timeworn Carparo stone palazzos and baroque churches, cocktail bar Farmacia Balboa was the first to set the tone for the energetic new era here when it opened in 2014 on the main piazza. Down the street, the menu at the intimate Bar Lemí – Cozze e Gin includes dry-aged cod and mackerel burgers and fried anchovies, before it’s time to return to Palazzo Daniele for a well-earned rest.

Day 3: Valle d’Itria and Ionian coast

Driving back up the length of Salento, towards the stark, white hilltop city of Ostuni, we hit Masseria Moroseta, a small hotel revered by design- minded travellers and one of the pioneers of Salento’s contemporary popularity. “What we’ve done is simply repropose the way things were always done here in the past,” says owner Carlo Lanzini, who hails from Brescia in the north of Italy but was beguiled by Salento’s traditional farmsteads. There’s a Shaker-like purity to Moroseta’s furnishings, with wooden spindle chairs and long wooden-plank tables where guests dine together, plus sparing touches such as rough-sided antique marble sinks and timeworn farm doors from flea markets. There’s an austerity that could be mistaken for Scandi minimalism but has Puglian simplicity at its roots.

The structure seems to have existed for centuries but was constructed from scratch. It was the first project designed by British architect Andrew Trotter, a friend of Lanzini’s from his time living in London. “Builders told us that the project wouldn’t work,” says Lanzini with a grin. “I was scared. We had the vision but no practical experience yet.” The city board didn’t approve the outsiders’ plans for a full two years but the structure of Moroseta was finally completed in 2016.

In the years since, the food has become as important as the design. Giorgia Eugenia Goggi, a chef from Milan who came for a stay and never left, serves Pugliese dishes that are heavy on vegetables and local produce. The communal tables serve no more than 20 guests from the hotel and beyond, so the four-night-a-week affair feels more like an easygoing gathering than a formal dining room. “This isn’t a restaurant in a traditional sense,” she says. “I have more freedom and more room to experiment.”

Heading out past the Valle d’Itria’s endless trulli among the olive groves, we visit the town of Grottaglie 30km away, where Greeks established a ceramic-making colony, whose craft continues to this day. The shop of Nicola Fasano makes clay plates for Moroseta with the splashed enamel dots that have characterised the region’s wares for centuries. “Jackson Pollock copied us!” a family member tells me with conviction that seems serious. “We’ve been contemporary forever.”

A short drive west from Grottaglie is the Ionian coast – because the sea is never far away in Salento – the waters of which seem clearer and brighter than the Adriatic. Punta Prosciutto, a beach that’s as delightful as its name, is dotted with grassy dunes and parchment-coloured sand. The sunset turns the horizon an incandescent pink, as gaps in the clouds above radiate a rosy crown of the sun in the sky. Before the two-hour drive back to Bari, I remember a local’s advice at the beginning of my trip: “To live serenely is to live better.” Now how about that house in Salento?

How a school in deepest Alabama is using architecture and civic smarts to revive rural America

To reach the tiny town of Newbern, Alabama, you take a long drive south from Birmingham, past catfish ponds and scores of bright white churches, until you come to the South’s strangest-looking fire station. This big- shouldered structure, all steel webbing and soaring timber trusses, sticks out among the trees and trailers on Highway 61. John Dodson, volunteer fire chief and a man of few words, runs his hand admiringly over the polycarbonate exterior and cedar slats that catch the heat of the low sun in winter and help to prevent the fire engines’ water tanks from freezing. “We used to park the trucks outside the house of a guy who lived across the street,” he tells Monocle. “So this is certainly better.”

The fire station was Newbern’s first public building in 110 years when it opened in 2004. It is the work of Rural Studio, an off-campus programme run by Alabama’s Auburn University, in which third- and fifth-year architecture students learn how to design and, crucially, build from the ground up. In 1993 two Auburn professors came to this corner of the state, called Hale County, when Newbern was little more than a few dusty streets and churches, and many people were living in precarious old houses. The architects’ proposition was simple: let our students live here and learn by doing, and we will help to build your civic infrastructure. In 30 years students have delivered more than 200 projects across western Alabama, from Scouts’ huts to skate parks, in towns such as Moundville and Footwash. They have also built many homes, helping residents to swap leaky trailers for a more contemporary pad.

Working in teams of four, students raise funds, source materials and engage with the community just as one would with a commercial client, though the students’ services come for free. When the time comes to realise their designs, they rig up the electrics, install the plumbing and oversee the pouring of foundations. “No one comes here with construction experience,” says student Adam Davis, who is hard at work on “Patriece’s Home” and showing off his tool belt.

Rural Studio accepts about 50 students a year and is highly selective. Their final projects are assessed on whether their structures can stand the test of time, surviving the notorious tornadoes of “Dixie Alley” and the extremes of summer and winter here. “We still use computerised drawings but taking the time to do it by hand is so important,” says student Meagan Mitchell, who is drawing the dormer of a house in the Red Barn, a former shop building that serves as a communal studio. The walls are lined with watercolour studies of the local architectural vernacular, which students paint in the field as research. “If you don’t have the confidence to draw it by hand, how can you expect to build it?” asks Mitchell.

Students come from all over the US and soon acclimatise to the region’s subtropical heat and slower pace. It might sound idyllic but Newbern is also at the sharp end of rural life. As in many small, isolated communities in the American South – as well as Italy, Spain and elsewhere – old families are dying out or departing for cities in search of work and opportunity. For generations, there was little civic infrastructure to keep people rooted and local leaders now seek out the services of Rural Studio to arrest their town’s decline.

Over a period of 30 years, waves of students have created the vast Lions Park in nearby Greensboro, turned a defunct bank building into Newbern Library, which became the first place in town where high-speed internet was available to the public, and built Newbern’s town hall out of cypress logs. Before that, citizens had nowhere to vote and the mayor kept everyone’s records in his basement. (Newbern still has some way to go when it comes to making all residents feel that they have a say in how the place is run; there’s an ongoing row, for instance, about exactly who is the legitimate mayor.)

“Rural Studio has made a real difference to so many families around here,” says Barbara Williams, the town’s librarian, who uses her elegant reading room to host children’s book festivals and signings by authors from across the state. She grew up in Hale County at a time of racial segregation. The town sits in a region of the South that was historically known as the Black Belt, named in part for its fertile soil but also because it was once an epicentre of US slave labour.

Despite its history and today’s economic travails, it’s a resilient, tight-knit community. “I tell our students, ‘You’re not here to save anybody,’” says Emily McGlohn, an associate professor at Rural Studio, who came as a student and decided to stay. “These folks don’t need us. The main thing that we’re doing is learning architecture and how to build buildings – and, as a by-product, someone gets a house.” 

The days start early at Morisette House, an old mansion gifted to the studio by a local family in 1996. By 06.00, students are on their knees, weeding the campus farm, where they grow food for their lunches in and around a pyramidal greenhouse. With just a few weeks to go until the annual pig roast that marks the end of the academic year, fifth-year students Naomi Tony-Alabi and Jake Buell are affixing drywall to a staircase that they have mocked up for the project that they’ll submit to their professors. Requested by a resident with a sliver of family land to build on, it’s a compact home that has two storeys and would sit comfortably in a parking space for two cars – and could be reconfigured for leftover land in inner-city developments. If it passes muster, they’ll stay on into the summer to build it.

“To maximise the space, we built upwards,” says Tony-Alabi, who is originally from Johannesburg. “We want people to live in the way that you would in any other home and use their own furniture.” Buell takes a step back, assessing their creation. “Having built these stairs, we would draw them very differently now,” he says.

The morning sun beats down on prototypes scattered all over the campus’s muddy lawns. At one end of the garden is a row of dormitories, erected by past students, including a sturdy one made from the waxed cardboard used to transport catfish. Currently in development is a ventilation-research project that takes design cues from how termite mounds regulate heat, with timber walls that create natural chimneys. At most other colleges, these architectural and structural ideas would probably never make it off the drawing board.

One such structure is a house built by Rural Studio’s late co-founder Samuel Mockbee, a charismatic, Mississippi-born architect who arrived in Hale County in 1993 with a vision to train what he called “citizen architects”. “He was really interested in getting architects out of the ivory tower,” says Mockbee’s successor, programme director Andrew Freear, a Brit who delivers acerbic but astute architectural critiques to his charges and swears prodigiously. “Certainly, it’s giving the students a hands-on education but it’s also about engaging with ordinary, everyday folks.”

Members of the faculty talk about “predictive, not prescriptive” design, which means that domestic layouts include obvious cues for where they could be expanded, often using eaves and overhangs to lead the way, in case the house’s owners want to make additions to their home in future as families grow or elderly relatives move in.

The defining feature of several new Rural Studio homes is a large, overarching roof, raised on columns, inspired by agricultural sheds called “pole barns” that are found all over the surrounding countryside. Usually, the actual house is built underneath it as a free-standing building that is not physically attached to the roof. “It’s a guiding infrastructure that gives us shelter from the elements as we build,” Freear says.

The home of Reverend Reginald Walker, for instance, has a large, angular roof with a series of small buildings beneath it on a concrete foundation, comprising bedrooms, a kitchen and a storage shed, which together create a courtyard shielded from the wind and rain. Walker, a former military man and pastor, moved here in 2021 and has already plotted out additional space for his extended family. “For now, though, it’s just me and my dogs out here,” he says.

A short drive away is the new home of Margie Myers, which is striking while still looking somewhat like a house on a Monopoly board. It has two front doors with an easily reconfigurable layout inside that offers the option of turning the downstairs area into two separate living spaces. It’s a home made to be passed down the generations. Myers sits in a rocker on her vast porch – another feature of Rural Studio’s design language and a major part of life in the South, where large families gather to sit in the afternoon sun and sip sweet tea. “I’ve lived in Hale all my life,” says Myers, who moved out of her trailer 18 months ago and has made the place her own, decorating it with family portraits and framed Bible passages. “I ain’t intending to leave.”

Rural communities might seem far removed from the problems facing major US cities but, despite all of the space, many also face housing shortages. As its portfolio of houses has grown and matured, Rural Studio has tried to create a series of smart, cost-effective model homes that can be built elsewhere and are replicable at scale. In 2019 this programme, the Front Porch Initiative, caught the eye of mortgage lender Fannie Mae, which is now supporting the development of Rural Studio-designed homes in parts of the rural South, where people often have the desire to put down roots but lack access to affordable housing.

Closer to home, in Hale County, the current intake of students is working on a rapid rehousing project for a homeless charity in Uniontown and has built sheltered accommodation in Greensboro for an organisation called Project Horseshoe Farm, which works with vulnerable people in the community.

Rural Studio’s work hasn’t entirely reversed the outflow of people from many of the smaller towns here but the sense of community that now exists in places that it has designed is impressive. Little leaguers pile out of Lions Park at the end of their baseball game; there’s a warm glow in the windows of Newbern Library as an author reads aloud from her latest novel. In Greensboro, Main Street now has its closest thing to a pub, called The Stable, which started life as a Rural Studio refit of an old building and holds a popular quiz every week. (A group of Presbyterians always wins, apparently.)

Yet the most radical thing to emerge from the studio is the encounters that it has brought about between people from seemingly opposite sides of American life. Take one client, Frankie Fikes, who emerges from his trailer with a pistol holstered on one hip and his mobile phone on the other. He and his wife, Rosie, have become quite attached to the Rural Studio students working on their new house. Fikes has built them a picnic table, on which he serves them barbecue at the end of a long week.

“Back in the day, they called it ‘mother wit’, which means that anything I can imagine, I can build,” says Fikes. That’s the kind of rural nous that students hope to pick up in their time in the country. But how does the couple feel about students hammering away in their garden for months on end? “We’ll miss them when they’re gone, so they can take their time,” says Rosie. “I’ve got time.” 

Front and centre

At many buildings on dense city blocks, one façade replete with ornate detailing is all that’s on show. Other walls tend to be less adorned or packed tightly against neighbouring structures.

This is not the case at Barcelona’s La Carbonería building, which has four dramatically embellished façades with arching windows and striking balustrades. Its construction took place in 1864 while plans for the city were still being drawn up and, with its developer unsure which wall would face the road, all were made attractive. When the streets were eventually completed, one of these impressive fronts was boxed in by other buildings and hidden from view for more than 150 years. But a recent intervention by Ángel Borrego Cubero, of Spanish firm Office for Strategic Spaces, has revealed it. The architect carved out an internal courtyard in front of the hidden façade, allowing those inside the building to view it when crossing the new yard.

“We try to listen to the stories we find,” says Borrego Cubero of the redevelopment project, which also included a renovation of the entire building. “We wanted to return a view of this battleground façade.” The result is a revitalised structure that pays tribute to the building’s heritage.

Nic Monisse on
Learned friends

Creative industries often lack the structure that corporate workplaces bring, with many emerging practitioners striking out on their own to ensure creative control. This might help to produce outstanding work, free from constraint but one downside is that many creatives work in isolation, without the guiding hand of a master or mentor.

It’s a situation that Rolex has been trying to remedy through its Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative – partnering an established creative with an emerging one – which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Over the course of seven days at the inaugural Rolex Arts Festival in Athens, the Swiss watchmaker gathered about 100 mentors and protégés who have participated in the programme to celebrate and reflect on the process.

The event featured several exhibitions, including a group show by five architecture protégés – Sahel Alhiyari, Gloria Cabral, Mariam Issoufou Kamara, Yang Zhao and Simon Kretz – which opened with a talk moderated by David Chipperfield, Kretz’s mentor. Chipperfield was quick to point out the obvious benefits of the scheme for his participating protégé, saying that his relationship with Kretz enabled him to transfer his own experiences, good and bad. But the Pritzker Prize-winner was also keen to stress the importance of the relationship to an established architect such as himself. “The discussions that one has with their protégé are interesting because they’re asking you things that you know but, at the same time, things that destabilise and challenge you, which gives you strength,” he said.

Chipperfield’s comments should be noted by experienced creatives everywhere. Lending time to emerging talents will not only nurture the next generation but further their own practice too.

Eye candy

Hilu means “sweet” in Arabic – a fitting name for the rounded timber stools that reminded designer Faezah Shaharuddin of the circle-shaped lollies she enjoyed as a child. “I like working with wood because it has this inherent nostalgia and warmth,” Shaharuddin says of the designs for her furniture brand, Studio Kallang. “I play around with a piece until it feels fresh instead of traditional.”

Founded in Singapore in 2021 and now run from the US, Studio Kallang’s teak and sungkai wood pieces are handcrafted by carpenters in Indonesia, who have become adept at translating the designer’s playful concepts into solid forms. The Hilu Stool is a case in point: simple and whimsical, its irreverent design is balanced with durability and craftsmanship. “It will last for decades,” says Shaharuddin.

Like all of Studio Kallang’s furniture, the stool is customisable. Buyers can select different-coloured timber for its alternating discs. “It’s exciting to see a piece come to life in a way that I hadn’t thought of,” says Shaharuddin. “It feels like a collaborative effort between me and the client.”
studiokallang.com

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Religious conversion

The Bullingerkirche is a historic Protestant church in Zürich’s Hard district. For the next few years, with city hall undergoing refurbishment, it will be the temporary seat of the cantonal and municipal parliament. To ensure that the century-old church was fit for its new political purpose, architecture studio Ernst Niklaus Fausch Partner AG was tapped to retrofit it. And the result is a bold reimagining of the space.

“The most important thing was to change the atmosphere,” says Bertram Ernst, one of the project’s architects. “A church is built to spotlight one person who talks to an audience but we needed the space to encourage dialogue.” To this end, the architects installed seating in a horseshoe formation and dismantled the pulpit: citizens now use the church’s pre-existing balcony to view proceedings. Three concentric rings that house lights and multiple loudspeakers have been mounted to the ceiling to provide ideal lighting and sound for those present (and for TV broadcasts). Threaded throughout the structure are subtle fabric panels that soften the church’s acoustics, creating a warm and welcoming space for politicians and the public alike.

The overhauled space, which hosted its first council session in February, is already proving to be a hit with lawmakers. “A few of the members of parliament have told me that they don’t want to go back to the historic town hall,” says Ernst. If this is the case, they might have to fight it out with the building’s usual occupants, who have hinted at their interest in retaining the new setup for the church’s governing body.

Home comforts

“Not so long ago, a lot of the furniture that people had in their homes was made locally,” says Paul de Zwart, founder of British furniture and homeware brand Another Country. “There’s beauty, simplicity and honesty in that way of making and we want to recreate it in our designs.” Since it was established in 2010, the firm has close ties to Dorset, where it develops prototypes and works on bespoke commissions, so its decision to open its first showroom outside London in Semley, a nearby village, seems like a natural move. “It made sense for us to come home as a brand,” says De Zwart. “It’s a stone’s throw from where the first pieces were made.”

Located in a refurbished former dairy farm at rural- office complex Chaldicott Barns, the new shop is spread across three rooms, dedicated to the living room, kitchen and dining room, and bedroom respectively. Though the wares on show are certainly impressive (furniture by award- winningdesigner David Irwin and cutlery by David Mellor are among the standouts), it’s the scale of the building that is most significant for those making a purchase – as well as those looking to design their own retail space. The cosy rooms are reflective of the area’s farm-like architectural vernacular and scale.

“The barn gives us the chance to tell the story of our brand from a different angle and with a different eye than the one we tell in London,” says De Zwart. The result? A shop that shares the brand’s story and helps prospective buyers understand how the furniture might sit in their own homes and cottages.

IMAGES: Hannes Henz, Rolex, Simona Rota, Studio Kallang, Sam Walton

The Entrepreneurs

Tom Edwards on…
Business making a difference

When it comes to reshaping cities and creating community, a smart redeployment of social capital can be a more potent force than a chequebook. Lauren Scott-Harris is the founder of Earnt, an initiative that unites great brands with causes, incentivising people to do good deeds in return for access to in-demand products, services and experiences.

“When I had my son, I questioned the world in which he was going to grow up, with climate anxiety and consumption anxiety,” says Scott-Harris. “The premise of Earnt is to consume with more intention. We ask artists and musicians what bothers them. They might say, ‘If you really like me, if you really want to come to my concert or my restaurant, this is what’s important to me. I’d love you to go and volunteer and to do this for me.’ If they get 30,000 people to do it, they don’t have followers, they have an army.”

Though this is certainly a model that works for an engaged public, are there entrepreneurial fixes that can benefit those who are often omitted from the discourse altogether? Alex Head (pictured, on left) is CEO of Social Pantry, a catering and events company that offers former offenders a chance to escape the vicious cycle of recidivism via a new path in hospitality. For Head, the solution is about opportunity. “If the judicial system says that these guys should be back in society, why wouldn’t we offer them a job?” says Head. “Many have transferable skills. They’re ambitious and clever. Lots of them have gone from care home to care home, prison to prison, but haven’t had much opportunity. We say, ‘There’s a paid job here if you want it.’ We support in several ways, from buying them a bus pass to doing that first commute. It changes their chances.”

To hear more from business owners who are determined to do good, listen to Monocle Radio’s weekly programme ‘The Entrepreneurs’. Subscribe to the podcast for more.

Kelp at hand

During his 30-year naval career, Michael Williamson spent plenty of time at sea but paid little attention to the topic of seaweed. Today it’s front of mind for the former commander of Canada’s West Coast Naval Base. He is now CEO of Cascadia Seaweed, the largest kelp grower in Canada. The firm has a suite of seaweed-derived agricultural products hitting market this year.

When Williamson retired from the armed forces, he started frequenting a monthly breakfast business meet-up. Over coffee in 2018, geologist William Collins, who ran a successful train-electronics company, extolled the economic and environmental virtues of seaweed farming. Williamson soon saw the potential for seaweed to join the ranks of salmon and shellfish as valuable components of British Columbia’s ca$1.4bn (€960m) aquaculture industry. There is broad scientific consensus that cultivating seaweed offers valuable environmental benefits, including sucking carbon out of the atmosphere and providing habitats for aquatic life.

Along with oceanographer Tony Ethier, the pair toured a seaweed farm in 2019 at the Bamfield Marine Sciences Center, a world-class research facility on the remote west coast of Vancouver Island. Wild kelp forests are abundant in the cold waters of the North Pacific but replicating the conditions in which they grow naturally has taken years of study. Convinced that they could farm seaweed at scale, the trio met a consortium of Canadian indigenous groups who already held aquaculture licences. Six months later, Cascadia Seaweed had two farms in the wild seeded with baby kelp. Today the firm works with seven First Nations groups across coastal British Columbia.

After experimenting with seaweed-flavoured snacks and spices, Cascadia Seaweed is embarking this year on a new future in agriculture. The company pulled some 250 tonnes (227,000kg) of seaweed out of the water during this spring’s harvest, which will be processed by autumn into a liquid extract for plant food, a bio-stimulant for commercial agriculture crops and a food supplement for cattle that reduces methane emissions. Williamson believes that supporting global food production with seaweed products is a net positive for the planet. “Whatever you make with seaweed, it’s better than making it with harsh chemicals,” he says.

Along British Columbia’s vast coastline, there is plenty of room for more seaweed farms. Williamson’s team charted the course for commercial seaweed aquaculture in the province but are willing to share in its abundance. “We’ve done the hard work of setting the sector up,” he says. “But the demand and variety of products is such that it would be co-operation not competition.”

Bright ideas, big cities

On a new urban politics

Politicians on both sides of the political divide are failing to provide a comprehensive set of solutions to the US’s urban malaise. Forging an approach that prioritises the needs of citizens on a local and national level could be the key to saving our cities.

In September my daughter will enrol in a bilingual preschool in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. On paper, the plan is an urbanist’s fantasy: we will cycle to the school via a “neighbourhood greenway”, a street designed to slow traffic. Once she’s inside the preschool’s seven-storey mixed-use building replete with rooftop playground – and I’ve locked my bike away – a nearby subway station will whisk me wherever my day leads.

The flipside is that we have to cycle past one of Seattle’s worst spots, where drugs and stolen goods are openly sold on the street. Addicts congregate daily, while people with untreated mental illnesses shadowbox their demons. Graffiti taggers hit small businesses with impunity and many shops are now vacant. Despite $1bn (€924m) of municipal expenditure on shelters and housing in the past decade, garbage-strewn encampments – a magnet for gun violence – sprawl nearby. Sporadic police presence and infrequent arrests do little to deter the grim scene, while social worker outreach barely makes a dent. This deadly cocktail plagues many US cities. While rumours of the deaths of Seattle, Portland and San Francisco are greatly exaggerated, quality of life deteriorates the longer that these stubborn pockets of disorder persist.

To fix this situation, we need a new urban politics that looks beyond blinkered divisions. While Republicans tout law and order, they are hostile to public transport and social housing, which has made them mostly persona non grata in US cities, where they claim just two mayoralties among the 30 largest metropolises. Instead, most municipal elections pit moderate Democrats versus progressive ones. The moderates have shown a willingness to confront urban ills but good intentions are not enough. The progressives have abandoned the dead-end slogan of “defund the police” but they still resist hiring more cops, prosecuting drug crimes and stepping up involuntary commitment. As a result, there is no political home for citizens who want increased investments in quality urbanism and stronger action on street disorder. My city feels cleaner and safer in the 18 months since mayor Bruce Harrell took office but he shows little appetite for denser housing or new rail lines.

Forging a new urban politics would recognise that cities alone cannot fix national political decisions. Washington must strengthen the social safety net, secure the border against drug trafficking and provide emergency shelter and housing nationwide. Local leaders must prioritise the needs of the citizens who make cities vibrant. If fentanyl smoking on buses deters commuters then remove those involved. If the escalating cost of cleaning graffiti pushes shopkeepers out of business then prosecute vandalism ordinances. Compassion and tolerance, while noble ideals, have left everyday citizens questioning the viability of their hometowns. If we want to save our cities, it takes the moral and political courage to say no.

About the writer: Scruggs is an award-winning journalist who writes about built, natural and cultural environments. His reporting has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, Next City, Thomson Reuters Foundation and The Washington Post. He lives in Seattle with his wife and daughter.

Lisbon vs Airbnb

Rising rents are threatening the quality of life in the Portuguese capital but is the short-term rental site really the only one to blame?

Lisbon had changed a lot since my previous visit. About 15 years ago (the exact date is fuzzy), I’d fallen in love with its grilled sardines, vertiginous streets, perennial sunshine and low cost of living. Returning with my family in May this year, I noticed just how many more people were packed into the centre, from sightseers riding its now ubiquitous electric tuk-tuks to groups of half-cut lads on stag dos. Given its quality-of-life draw, it’s hardly surprising that people want to visit or even move to the Portuguese capital permanently. Aided by incentives such as the investment-focused golden visa, as well as its digital-nomad equivalent, many expats have made the city their home in recent years.

During my few days in Lisbon, I met a middle-aged Floridian who had moved last year, as well as an English couple who were looking to return to the Portuguese capital where they once lived after a few damp years in London. There are now plenty of cafés that cater to the avocado-toast and açai-bowl crowd, and where a flat white will set you back €4. The problem is that, in a country where the minimum wage is just €760 a month (the median in Lisbon is a little higher), you end up with an English-language-menu dual economy where the patronage is almost exclusively foreign. Rents have, of course, rapidly risen.

So how do you limit this influx of people? And has any city managed to find the perfect formula? Lisbon’s mayor Carlos Moedas, a former EU commissioner, doesn’t think his city has too many visitors, at least for now. “We have tourism and it’s very important for us,” he says. “But we cannot let Lisbon just become an Airbnb city.”

This is why new Airbnb licences have been frozen in 16 of 24 Lisbon parishes. The central government has followed suit on nationwide restrictions; it also announced in February an end to the golden-visa programme. These moves send a message and are aimed, in part, at cooling the spiking property prices and making sure that, in Lisbon’s case, its city centre doesn’t get carved out by short-term rentals to the detriment of real residents. The fear of a theme-park effect, felt in places such as Venice, must be at the back of minds.

The temporary Airbnb freeze in Lisbon is up for review in December. I hope at the very least that some restrictions are kept in place. But one must also be careful about piling in on a single bogeyman. Lisbon’s problems are complex and varied, including stagnant wages and real-estate speculation. Airbnb, for all its ills, has helped crumbling buildings in the historic centre to receive much-needed renovation investments that they might not have otherwise had. Tourism represents 20 per cent of Lisbon’s GDP and its digital nomads – through places such as Unicorn Factory Lisboa – bring in more capital. City hall hopes that it can balance being market-friendly with social policies aimed at the most vulnerable including building more housing and buying existing stock to rent at subsidised rates.

An outright ban on Airbnb is unrealistic but Lisbon must continue to closely and carefully monitor short-term rentals, rather than going hard and fast now before letting the issue fall by the wayside. A city stripped of its core residents isn’t worth the trade-off – not for all the açai bowls in the world.

About the writer: Stocker is Monocle’s Europe editor at large, based in Milan. A regular on planes zipping around the continent, he was previously Monocle’s Americas editor at large in New York. Before moving to the US, Stocker covered Latin America from a base in Buenos Aires.

On isolation in cities

Organisations and design practices in Singapore are coming up with novel solutions to lonely city living.

Big cities, lonely people. There are many reasons why life in crowded and busy metropolises can be isolating. In Asia, long working hours, small apartments and the prevalent use of food-delivery services have contributed to people being less social, increased loneliness and a rise in the number of mental and physical illnesses.

It is, of course, a global issue: the UK and Japan have appointed loneliness ministers. But in Singapore, where there are already plenty of communal amenities such as parks, community centres and coffee shops, the goal is getting people out of their apartments to use them, mingle and make friends. And it turns out that you can design your way out of the problem – at least partially.

Skyville at Dawson housing project, by Singapore’s WOHA practice, features terraces and gardens on every eleventh floor of its 46 storeys; all 960 homes have easy access to (and views of) these green pockets. They draw people outside – or even just to their windows, where they might see a friendly face and wave hello. A National University of Singapore survey found that Skyville residents knew more neighbours than those living in other estates of a similar size.

Still, while amenities such as dog runs, ball courts and garden plots do well to bring together neighbours with common interests, communities need a hand to integrate disparate social groups. In Macpherson, an older Singaporean neighbourhood where new residential blocks have been added, the community- centric practice Participate in Design brought older residents and newly settled young families together to create art for the estate. As well as being a bonding exercise that helped to form some unlikely friendships, it fostered a sense of ownership and belonging.

In another corner of the city-state, philanthropic organisation Lien Foundation and design studio Forest & Whale are looking at ways to make the local coffee shop double up as a place that offers community care. One proposal suggests that coffee shops start a gift-card programme. It’s a simple but clever idea: a gift shows you care and a coffee subscription gives people a reason to spend time at the café, rather than at home alone.

These designers and community organisations prove that cities don’t need to be overwhelmed by loneliness and the mental-health fallout that comes with it. Most cities already have the basic ingredients for these community-building initiatives, from the coffee shop to the neighbourhood park via the corner to be livened up. A tweak here or a nudge there can make humans do what they’re already inclined to do: forge bonds and build together.

Learnings from enduring cities

Cities are resilient beasts; not even wars, natural disasters or firestorms ignited by candles can keep them down. Here are five of the most ill-fated metropolises and the wisdom that can be gained from them.

Cities might have their ups and downs but they remain extraordinarily difficult to kill. When one considers how many have been demolished by disaster or war, what is remarkable is how few of them have stayed that way. Arguably the only ruined human settlement that can be safely said to be permanently abandoned is Pripyat: the Ukrainian town of 50,000 people evacuated following the 1986 explosion at the nearby Chernobyl nuclear plant. Indeed, when Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, visited Japan in May, he went to Hiroshima. With his usual flair for spotting the local connection, he said that Ukraine’s more recently devastated cities would recover, just as Hiroshima had – and he was undoubtedly right. Below is Monocle’s far-from-complete list of cities that have returned from the dead – a testament to the endurance of our urban spaces.

Darwin

Darwin was levelled by Cyclone Tracy early on Christmas Day 1974: 71 of its citizens were killed and more than 80 per cent of its buildings were destroyed or damaged. The remote capital of Australia’s Northern Territory had been abruptly rendered uninhabitable: about three-quarters of its population of 47,000 was hurriedly evacuated. By New Year’s Eve, however, Australia’s government had announced plans to establish a Darwin Reconstruction Commission, with a mandate to rebuild the city within five years. It was done in three, adhering to rigorous new building codes that were rolled out across the country. Today, Darwin is home to 150,000 people and while several cyclones at least as powerful as Tracy have struck Australia since, none have done a fraction of the damage.

Warsaw

Many of Europe’s cities required rebuilding after the Second World War but few were rebuilt with the fabulous defiance of Warsaw. When the shooting stopped in 1945, Poland’s capital was a ruin. Instead of building a new city, Varsovians determined to build the old one all over again. Warsaw’s rubble was reconstituted into facsimiles of what had been destroyed, guided in part by the paintings of Bernardo Bellotto, a nephew of Canaletto.

By 1955 the heart of Warsaw’s new Old Town was beating once again. Reconstruction of surrounding streets continued over subsequent decades with the Royal Castle completed in the 1980s. Warsaw’s (not-actually-very) Old Town is now a Unesco World Heritage site. And deservedly so, as much for what it represents as what it looks like.

Lisbon

In 1755, Lisbon – one of the world’s richest cities, a great port and a hub of empire – did not have the advantages of electricity or internal- combustion engines. A colossal earthquake on 1 November that year prompted both a tsunami and, by toppling uncountable candles lit for All Saints’ Day, a six-day firestorm. The devastation was near total; the imperial wealth hoarded in waterfront warehouses lost.

Lisbon was returned to life by its chief minister, the formidable Marquis of Pombal, one of those characters able to sense opportunity in disaster. He ordered Lisbon rebuilt on a logical grid pattern and applied building codes intended to mitigate against earthquake and fire. He also laid new drains and buttressed the waterfront. Lisbon’s downtown is still known as the Baixa Pombalina.

Beirut

It is arguable that rebuilding Beirut is a little like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge – a process that must be started all over again just as soon as you think that you’ve finished. The pretty beaux-arts city centre, which earned Beirut the nickname “the Paris of the East”, was destroyed during the Lebanese Civil War of 1975 to 1990.

It was rebuilt by Solidere, a controversial public-private developer founded in the mid-1990s by Lebanon’s billionaire prime minister, Rafic Hariri, who was assassinated in 2005 by a car bomb, a few blocks from what Solidere had rebuilt. A colossal explosion in the Port of Beirut in 2020 has necessitated further repairs to the city: it must be hoped, if not expected, that these will be done in deference to Beirut’s rumbustious spirit, rather than in defiance of it.

Jerusalem

The Old City has been attacked, sacked and pillaged any number of times over several turbulent millennia, and squabbled over more or less constantly – and, indeed, currently. The most recent major rebuild involves Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter, which was substantially destroyed by the Arab Legion during fighting in 1948, taken by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967, and gleamingly refurbished since. What with one thing and another, Jerusalem is probably the oldest continuous (and ongoing) demonstration of the extraordinary ability of cities to regenerate.

About the writer: Mueller is a contributing editor at Monocle as well as host of Monocle Radio’s The Foreign Desk and (usually) The Monocle Daily. He has visited several ruined international cities of one kind or another, including Pripyat in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

An aspiring megacity

With a booming population, Lagos is a ‘megacity’. So what are the basic issues that need to be addressed before the Nigerian city can live up to that term?

Lagos is a “megacity”, a city of more than 10 million people, yet the term has taken on a wider meaning: a heavily urbanised metropolis designed for the comfort and appeal of the rich alone. It can also be thought of as a place that, while not a utopia, creates opportunities for everyone to belong.

With a 450km stretch of coastline and an exploding population attracting commercial and economic interests, Lagos is continuing to grow at a rapid pace. The population of the Nigerian city that I call home is expected to hit 40 million by 2050. But it needs more than ultra-modern infrastructure to be a megacity.

The government’s current vision of a mega-hub is an urbanised centre with a rapid rail system, world-class malls, tourist infrastructure, more airports and developed industries ranging from technology to food. All of these elements are needed but they do nothing to address the problems of poor Lagosians, and middle-class ones like myself, who often find themselves locked out of discussions and even displaced from the city.

While Lagos can attract negative comparisons for a long list of reasons – from endless traffic jams and gaping, smelly gutters to homeless people sleeping under bridges and untidy streets – the good life still exists here. Managed correctly, it could be an example to both Africa and the world.

First of all, the sprawling city needs to have a smooth and efficient bus system that is capable of carrying thousands of people affordably (rather than more expensive and less extensive rail projects). Investments should be made in proper low-cost residential housing, job opportunities for the teeming population and a constant electricity supply (among other critical amenities). Without such basics, we are going nowhere. The government should focus on these rather than developing exclusive areas for the wealthy.

The threat of climate change also needs to be addressed. In Lagos, we are living – luxuriously in some parts and hopelessly in others – a mere two metres above sea-level. By 2050, as the city’s population reaches the projected milestone, the sea will have risen by at least a metre, displacing millions of people and causing billions of dollars in economic damage. The current government needs to turn its attention to this threat by engaging in smart climate initiatives, such as saving the remaining wetlands instead of encroaching on them, as is currently happening as the city expands.

Imagine what Lagos could be like if we saved it from its worst problems: a megacity humming with accessible beaches, a thriving art and music scene, a never-ending nightlife, a base for booming technology industries and endless economic opportunities for a mosaic of different cultures and ethnicities.

That for-now imagined Lagos would no longer simply be a launchpad for myself and others to pursue ambitions in the West; that Lagos would be a permanent home, a place to lay down proper roots and not seek to escape every few years.

In that Lagos, there would be affordable housing with constant electricity, a working transport system, an enviable lifestyle and equal access to global opportunities. In that Lagos, the transformation into a true global megacity would be complete.

About the writer: Adetayo is a writer and journalist based in Lagos, Nigeria. He has reported for numerous media outlets including Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Vice and African Arguments. He was longlisted for One World Media’s Print Award in 2021.

Local heroes

Neighbourhood businesses and services make cities better to live in. That’s because great shops, bars and markets don’t just make our high streets livelier and more interesting, they also make us care about and for our communities. And when people build better bonds with those around them – whether it’s by going to the same tailor every couple of months, bumping into neighbours getting their groceries or having an impromptu conversation with someone at a bar – they start thinking about how they can get more involved with the places they call home.

Here we present a line-up of businesses around the globe – from Hong Kong to Antwerp, Stockholm, London and Madrid – that function as neighbourhood anchors. They are run by entrepreneurs who know their regulars by name, look forward to seeing them every week and will always go the extra mile, no matter what.

Some, such as florist-cum-newsstand Wilder in Antwerp and interior design-focused hardware shop Kanamono in Hong Kong, are daring to try out new business models. Others, including the Au Revoir bar in Athens and Denis Camisería in Madrid, have been in the same spot for decades. But what they all have in common is a desire to connect with the people around them, to change their communities for the better – or to give their best to a place that’s already thriving. After all, that’s what any good neighbour should do. We all have something to learn from them.

The sensible outfitter
Denis Camisería
Madrid

Madrid-based menswear boutique Denis Camisería has been dressing Madrileños for decades. Owner Jorge Navares’s great-grandfather, who made military clothing during the Spanish Civil War, established the business in 1941 in Madrid. Now, four generations later, the family is still paying homage to him. “Depersonalised chains dominate most of Madrid’s high streets and other European capitals these days,” Navares tells monocle. But Denis Camisería has always kept its client base closer to home. “We know our customers by name, just as tailors would have done 50 years ago,” he says. “It’s a very personal experience.” This is also why all of the brand’s designs – from tweed suits, cotton shirts to lambswool coats – are designed in-house. “In our services, materials and production lines, we always look for quality,” says Navares.

The tasty local
Babette
Stockholm

Fredrik Lundberg, co-founder of Babette, says that the crowd at his Stockholm restaurant is one big mix, comprising everyone from families celebrating a milestone birthday to people grabbing a takeaway pizza. “Sweden can be very square when it comes to eating out,” says Lundberg (pictured). “But we bring a little bit of Paris, London, Tel Aviv and Los Angeles to Stockholm and put it all into this little shoebox of a neighbourhood restaurant.”

Founded in 2015, Babette sits in the middle of the neighbourhoods of Vasastan, upmarket Östermalm and the central business district – a good catchment area. Lundberg credits the restaurant’s success to its reliable opening hours. “The kitchen closes at midnight every day, so you never need to double-check whether or not we are open,” he says.

The compact bistro
Grigio
Tokyo

When Grigio opened on a small street in Daikanyama nine years ago, its owner, Tatsuya Yoshino, was working on the other side of Japan. But he fell in love with the Tokyo location. Today, the smiley team includes chef Kiho Fujii, as well as manager Koki Chiba, who has been here since the beginning. “This street was really quiet back then,” says Chiba. “There wasn’t much here.” Daikanyama is now busy, with plenty of tourists around, and Chiba is proud of the loyal community that the restaurant has built up. “Most of our customers are regulars and we always keep seats free for them,” he says.

On the menu is a mix of Japanese favourites such as breaded pork cutlet sandwiches or steak on rice, as well as comfort food infused with influences from Japan, Italy and elsewhere – pasta with homemade sausage, shiitake mushrooms in red vinegar, grilled spicy chicken paired with a glass of Puglian red. Ingredients come from suppliers that the team have known for years, including rice from farmers in Ishikawa and onions from Awaji-shima. Japanese pop provides the soundtrack and conversation flows easily. Solo diners chat to the chefs and to each other; many friendships have been forged at the restaurant’s well-worn counter. Grigio is a reminder of the importance of a welcoming neighbourhood spot. “We like to compare this place to a living room,” says Chiba. “Somewhere you can come for a coffee, a quick bite or a full meal. The food is delicious, of course, but we also do our best to make everyone feel at home.”

The versatile florist
Wilder
Antwerp

Inspired by the independent shops, cafés and galleries cropping up around them in recent years, Mayken Craenen and her business partner, Marijke Boesmans, opened their first flower shop, Wilder, on a street near Antwerp Central Station in 2019. “Antwerp feels like a big village,” says Craenen. “It has a good balance of familiarity and energy.” This summer, the creative duo have been expanding their network in the area, creating bespoke bouquets for weddings and other events, as well as setting up flower subscriptions for nearby studios, cafés and bakeries.

Wilder is, in some ways, more than just a florist: the shop also sells a selection of magazines, art books, Niwaki gardening tools, stationery and handmade ceramics, while hosting regular events with local creatives on the side. “We love the dynamic that this diversity creates,” says Craenen.

The private community center
Brentwood Country Mart
Los Angeles

At Brentwood Country Mart, you can find an outpost of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop a few steps from a place that will reheel your boots. “Generations of customers have come through here,” says Celia Goli, who has run the shoe-repair shop with her husband, Samir, for more than 40 years. Opened in 1948, the Country Mart was once Elizabeth Taylor’s corner shop. Today it is home to barn-like boutiques for the likes of James Perse and Sid Mashburn. Alongside these brands are businesses that every neighbourhood needs: people buy stamps at its post office; Lloyd’s does a close-towel shave; Farmshop is the place for pantry essentials, even if the Sunday brunch is also a bit of a scene. “Brentwood Country Mart is fast becoming a community centre,” wrote the Los Angeles Examiner in 1953 – and so it has remained.

The community mall
The Commons
Bangkok

When Vicharee Vichit-Vadakan and her brother, Varatt, opened The Commons in Bangkok, they dreamed about creating a “neighbourhood institution” in Thong Lor, where they grew up. In 2015 they achieved just that. Dubbed a community mall, The Commons could just as easily be called a privately run community centre.

Alongside a small retail offering, it provides various services across four storeys, including cooking classes, playgroups and hair salons. But the big draw is the ground-floor food hall, where independent vendors are arranged market-style, with plenty of shared space. “All these components create balance and make it lively throughout the day,” says Vicharee. “We held a pasta-making workshop recently and afterwards a class full of strangers hung out here the whole night.”

The building’s considered design facilitates chance encounters. Friends can spot one another across multiple floors, while big communal tables nudge diners to sit together. (Thais are famously friendly but still need help meeting new people.) Vicharee believes that the secret is simple. “You need to create reasons for people to come together and provide space for them to feel like they belong,” she says.

The bookshop
Under the Cover
Lisbon

When Monocle speaks to Luís Cunha, co-founder of Lisbon’s Under the Cover, a contemporary bookshop stocking independent magazines, he’s preparing to host an event with It’s a Passion Thing, an Austrian publication about people who devote their lives to doing what they love. “It could have featured us!” he says. Cunha and his partner, Arturas Slidziauskas (pictured, on right, with Cunha), were working in medicine when they decided to open the shop. “We act as a link between editors and readers,” says Cunha. “We consider all aspects of each magazine and are able to tell its story.”

The hardware shop
Kanamono
Hong Kong

Interior designer Sammi Wong opened Kanamono in 2015 after she sensed a lack of exciting options in Hong Kong when it came to items such as door locks, hinges and hooks. Inspired by small independent hardware shops in Tokyo and Osaka – and keen to offer customers unique ways to furnish their homes – she now sells everything from German ceramic lightbulb holders to vintage hand-wound clocks in her cosy shopfront in Tai Hang, a low-rise nook off Victoria Park.

Unlike most chains, the designer’s small, independent retail space provides customers with a more personalised shopping experience. At Kanamono, Wong is on hand to give advice and tell the stories behind the objects she sells. It’s a characteristic that she shares with other businesses in the neighbourhood. “You walk in from bustling Causeway Bay and you feel a different atmosphere in this small community,” she says of her surroundings. “The tranquil environment, various local restaurants, little shops, dai pai dong [open-air food stalls], cha chaan teng [Hong Kong cafés] and small vegetable stalls make the area feel like a miniature version of Hong Kong.”

The niche neighbour
Saisonal
Zürich

Standing inside Caspar Ruetz’s busy shop, it’s easy to see why people call him the asparagus king. A former banker, Ruetz opened the business on a quiet side street in Seefeld in 2021 after meeting a German asparagus farmer and deciding to embark on a career change. These days, his shop sells many specialities, including regional jerky, Italian buffalo mozzarella and fresh tomatoes, but the green vegetable remains the biggest crowd-pleaser.

Most customers here (many of whom are regulars) know exactly what they want. That said, Ruetz and his wife, Doris, still give first-timers insightful tips. The couple say that speaking to shoppers is the best part of the job. “I drive to Germany by myself at night, various times a week, to import the asparagus and then deliver them to more than 80 restaurants,” says Ruetz. “But I also bring them here to sell them to our customers.”

The wine merchant
Public Wine Shop
Melbourne

Serving some 300 cuvées – including European grapes from France, Germany and Austria as well as Australian producers – Melbourne’s Public Wine Shop is a neighbourhood favourite in the trendy suburb of North Fitzroy. “We could have 10 times the amount of Loire Valley chenin blanc here and it still wouldn’t be enough,” says Campbell Burton, who founded the shop with his wife, Charlotte Ryan, in 2020. Drawing on alfresco dining culture, Public has breezy outdoor tables popular with customers seeking respite from the summer heat. In the kitchen, chef Ali Currey-Voumard prepares hearty pastas, plates of charcuterie and oysters. “We have a lot of regulars who come a couple of times a week,” says Burton. “That’s the biggest compliment we could possibly get.”

The hotel escape
Fasano Fifth Avenue
New York

You’ll find discreet elegance in all of Fasano’s hotels. But the decor at the Brazilian group’s New York outpost is particularly impressive. Conceptualised by founder Gero Fasano and designed by French architect Thierry W Despont, the space is also home to an intimate dining bar, Fasano Caffé. General manager Andrea Natal runs a tight ship but it’s her way with people that sets the establishment apart. “The most important thing about running a hotel is taking care of people, whether they are your team, your colleagues or your guests,” she says. “There are now 10 hotels under the Fasano brand and all showcase what we value about Brazil: history, people, creativity. Fasano Fifth Avenue has brought this to New York.”

The good grocer
Summerhill Market
Toronto

When Monocle visits Toronto’s busy Summerhill Market, on a leafy avenue in Rosedale, the late-morning rush has just begun. Established in 1954 by the grocer Frank McMullen, the family-owned group of boutique supermarkets has built a reputation over the years for selling quality produce. Now run by the founder’s grandchildren, Brad and Christy McMullen, who have opened four additional shops in similarly upscale districts, the business is still thriving. “The service and the quality of the food are phenomenal here,” says customer Gail Zee, as she makes her way to the checkout past shelves heaped with fresh loaves of bread. These, along with the grocery’s popular range of meals, cakes, desserts, biscuits and condiments, are prepared daily at Summerhill Market’s own commissary.

It’s clear that the brand’s reputation is anchored to both the quality of its produce and the intimacy of the service it offers, characteristics that are often more difficult to maintain at national, big-box supermarket chains. “I like the way it’s small, easy to get around and I know where everything is,” says another shopper, Barbara Lacey. “The prices are higher but you get good quality, so it’s worth it.”

The optician
Monc
London

The realisation that every neighbourhood needs a good optician is what led Freddie Elborne (pictured, above) to open Monc eyewear’s first bricks-and-mortar shop on London’s Chiltern Street last year. The eyewear designers, based around the corner from monocle’s offices, have been helping people in the area to see better – and look sharper – ever since. Designed in the UK, Monc’s frames are sourced and made in small batches by a team in Italy using bio-acetate, a greener, biodegradable version of plastic made without crude oil.

That said, much of the brand is also built around a culture of repair. “Most people don’t even realise that eyewear can be revamped or repaired,” says Elborne. “Whether it’s a broken hinge, a scratched-up frame or something worse, we assess the damage and always try to bring people’s frames back to life as good as new.” As well as selling and fixing eyewear, the shop also hosts events and workshops. Getting better acquainted with the area can only be a good thing. And while Elborne and his team are relatively new to the neighbourhood, we think that they’re here to stay.

The trusty firefighters
Küsnacht fire brigade
Zürich

An essential part of the community, the 35 volunteer firefighters living in and around the Küsnacht municipality near Lake Zürich have long been able to quickly tend to any emergency. But they might be even faster now that they have a better base to operate from. In 2022 the regional government spent €12m renovating their station.

Showing off the facility presented a good excuse to get the community together. On Blaulichttag (blue-light day), Küsnacht’s residents gathered in the town centre to support their emergency and law-enforcement services. The opportunity to have a first look at the Moos Giuliani Herrmann Architekten-designed building was no doubt a major draw. For captain Christian Benz, it was also an opportunity to remind his community of the vital work undertaken by his team. On average, there are between 100 and 140 firefighting operations every year in Küsnacht. Solving these crises is seldom easy, though every scenario is different. “They can range from traffic accidents, where people are trapped, to the classic cat-up-a-tree scenario,” says Benz. “And, of course, there are always fires to put out too.”

Mexico City is dancing to a a different beat

It takes seconds for the dance floor to fill. It’s a Saturday night in Mexico City and as soon as the band strikes the first chord, onlookers from surrounding tables shoot up without hesitation. At the end of every song, they return to their tables for a quick sip of mezcal, then bounce back, without missing a beat. We’re at Barba Azul Cabaret, a dance hall that has been here since the 1950s. The space feels like it’s in a time warp, with red lighting, silver tinsel and servers dressed in white shirts and black waistcoats. “We have live music from Tuesday and Saturday,” says a proud Alejandro Moreno, one of Barba Azul Cabaret’s owners, who keeps a keen eye on proceedings. The band is playing cumbia to a crowd of old and young punters, couples and friends, all of whom have little in common other than the fact that they’re having an exceptionally good time.

Across town, there’s no shortage of real estate where people can burn up the dance floor, from old halls like this to major clubs, as well as parks and open squares. The vitality of Mexico City’s nightlife and its residents’ penchant for dancing isn’t just an attraction for those in search of a weekend on the tiles; it’s a telling sign of what makes this city an invigorating place to live. “Dance and night culture have a lot to do with the energy of Mexico City,” says Toño Vilches, co-founder of entertainment brand Archipiélago. “It’s a chaos that doesn’t allow you to stop.”

Vilches’ company runs bars and restaurants across town as well as hosting major music events. When Archipiélago opened its first outpost, Leonor, 15 years ago, the scene was dominated by big venues owned by profit- driven businessmen, where the music didn’t matter quite as much. Leonor was smaller than your average club, with no sign advertising it from the street. “It looked a bit like a living room,” says Vilches. “We were just a group of friends who put together some money and wanted to open a small bar.” At the heart of proceedings was a more experimental approach to music, which ranged from classic cumbia to techno and less mainstream genres. “We represented a generation that was born with the democracy of music through download platforms,” he says. Since then his team have organised huge festivals such as Trópico in Acapulco and Radio Bosque outside Mexico City, as well as concerts with Mexican and foreign artists. For Vilches, there could be no better place than this city to host parties. “I truly believe that its dance scene is one of the best in the world.”

Go out any night of the week and Vilches’ point will immediately be proven. Whether it’s a sonidero (a big party where people gather around speakers on the street), a pop-up event or people simply getting together in a park to shimmy to salsa, it won’t be long before you stumble on some catchy beats. Far from providing simple carefree entertainment, this liveliness changes the way residents feel about their everyday. “Mexico is a festive place and even if your life is going to hell, at least you can dance,” says Dora Mariana Vidal, founder of El Micky Bar, one of the most popular spots to have opened in the past year.

When we first arrive at her venue early in the evening, it’s hard to imagine the windowless room, which looks like a converted garage with tiled floors and cool blue lighting, heaving with some 300 people. Servers in red T-shirts are setting up for the night, arranging basic wooden chairs and tables as well as organising drinks behind the bar. “People come here to dance,” says Vidal, whose musical career began when she hosted a radio show. “By 22.00 it’s packed.” If you want to secure a spot, it’s best to come early. A few hours later that same night the queue reaches almost around the block, with stragglers trying to negotiate their way in via Nadia, the firm but friendly gatekeeper. Some wait in the slow-moving queue for hours; others, even if they’re close to the entrance, simply give up.

Once inside, the lucky ones groove, glued together, holding aloft cups of pitufos (a vodka and blue-energy drink concoction). The space is so tight that it’s almost impossible to move, and yet, somehow, everyone does. The crowd is mostly made up of youngsters but changes from night to night; Vidal has tried to create a space where everyone feels welcome, no matter their class or age. “It’s a good meld of people,” she says. “You can have an expensive whisky or a bottle of beer. It doesn’t matter where you come from.” From pop hits to reggaeton and Mexican classics, the songs played are all recognisable tracks that people can sing along to. The recent global rise of acts such as Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny has helped to create a newfound appetite for Spanish-language music – something that was starting to get lost in the city’s modern clubs.

Though traditional genres are still played in some barrios and old-school dance halls, in many affluent areas the nightlife scene had long been drowned out by techno and electronica. “In poorer parts of the city, people dance to Mexico’s beautiful music but in gentrified areas such as Condesa, it doesn’t happen so much,” says Pablo Usobiaga, co-owner of Café de Nadie, a vinyl-only bar in the hip Roma neighbourhood. “If you listen to traditional Mexican music, it’s either for dancing or singing,” he says. “When people hear mariachi, they start moving. Everyone knows the songs.” Slowly, he’s starting to see a shift as younger customers become more interested in Spanish-language tracks. “There is a resistance about not wanting to lose what we have in Latin America,” he says.

Usobiaga’s 550-strong record collection used to feature only 20 or so Spanish-language titles but that number has now grown to at least 70. “Three or four years ago things started changing, with artists coming to Mexico City from the rest of the continent,” he says. Parties such as Noche Negra, run by a Venezuelan-Brazilian, have taken the city by storm, bringing in DJs from all over Latin America. “We used to think that what happens in Europe or the US would happen in Mexico five years later,” says Usobiaga. “But now many things are coming from the south. We are realising that we are a cultural force.”

This influx of creatives and influences – something that has energised all disciplines, from food to design – has also been fundamental to Diaspora, a pop-up club and dance party founded in 2020. At these nights, diversity doesn’t just come by way of the genres played but also in the clientele, the staff and the performers who get booked. “It’s a place where people can connect,” says co-founder Quentin Perry, a Los Angeles transplant himself. “Our team is from different places; we have DJs who are Nigerian, Costa Rican, Colombian, Haitian, British…” This varied group plays anything from reggaeton to afrobeat and amapiano (a kind of house music from South Africa). “We wanted to recreate a diaspora in the dance industry,” says co-founder Brenda Lopez. What started as house parties at Perry’s place has now become one of the hottest tickets in Mexico City. Diaspora’s events, which range from dance competitions to DJ sets with special dress codes, are announced on social media, sometimes just one day in advance – and they always draw a crowd. “Mexicans love to party 24/7, so there’s a market to host an event every week,” says Perry.

To find proof of this round-the-clock willingness to move, we head out onto the streets in the morning. By midday on Sunday, a group of older residents have gathered under a canopy in Ciudadela, in the Cuauhtémoc barrio. They’re swirling to cumbia, being played by a band on a makeshift stage. Some passersby sit around the square, tapping their feet to the rhythm and swaying their heads to the songs they know and love. On the dance floor, no one is paying too much attention to step-counting or style; it’s all about enjoying a day among neighbours. It’s proof of something that El Micky’s Vidal believes is fundamental to the spirit of the city. “In Mexico we have a lot of places where people go to dance with unknown people, old and young,” she says. “They get together to dance and share things.”

Meanwhile, in Parque Mexico, instructor José Eduardo is rehearsing a bachata with his colleague Valeria Ávila before his class begins. Eduardo started teaching Latin American dance in 2015 at the National Autonomous University of Mexico but his weekend lunchtime lessons now take place under a bougainvillea-covered terrace. “In Mexico we listen to music like salsa from the moment we are born,” says Ávila. “It’s in our everyday lives, on the radio while we’re doing chores. Even if you don’t know how to dance, it’s instilled in us.”

When Eduardo started teaching in this green pocket of Condesa, he had seven students. Now he can count about 150, many of whom moved here during the pandemic. “Dancing is a language,” he says. “We have people from Germany, France and the US. Even though we teach in Spanish, they understand because the language and the rhythm is universal.” It is also a fail-safe way to build friendships and community – soon enough, a large crowd of attendees arrive. They drop their bags to the side and slip into line. Across the park, a cohort of 30 students has also just begun a Cuban salsa class. Once both lessons wrap up, everyone lingers a little longer, trying to master their new moves while chatting on the sidelines until the early evening. “I love the way they choose to spend the whole day with us,” says Eduardo. “We dance until the battery of the speaker goes flat.”

Viennese vision

To reach our meeting place, former deputy mayor of Vienna Maria Vassilakou must cross the Mariahilferstrasse, which she helped to transform from a congested road into a pedestrianised boulevard. The campaign turned her into a national superstar and ensured her re-election in 2015. “Some things become an integral part of a city’s everyday life and cannot be undone,” she says of her legacy, which also includes the introduction in 2012 of a €365 annual public-transport ticket, the redevelopment of Vienna’s Hauptbahnhof and more cycle lanes.

Vassilakou’s work won her many admirers but her exit from office wasn’t an altogether amicable one. In 2019, divisions within her party, the Greens, caused in part by Vassilakou’s backing for a disputed property project, forced her to resign. Though she didn’t face legal action, she felt that it was time to go. “People perceived me as an agent of change,” she says. “I wanted to continue doing what I love but somewhere else.” So she set up a consultancy, Vienna Solutions, to export the Austrian capital’s successes abroad. Today, Vassilakou barely spends more than a day or two at home. After our interview, she will fly to Reykjavík for a project to develop brownfield sites.

But her heart is in Vienna, to which she moved as an 18-year- old from Athens. “You need to start with an idea but you will never change anything alone,” she says. “Everyone likes to focus on me but none of my projects would have been possible without a dedicated team and the tens of thousands of Viennese who supported us.”

Growing pains

Busan, on South Korea’s southeastern tip, has played an important part in the country’s modern history. It was the last city standing when North Korea’s tanks swooped through the peninsula in 1950, hosting refugees who later enriched its economic and cultural life. As South Korea’s main container port – and one of the world’s largest – Busan has experienced explosive growth as the logistical hub for the country’s economic rise over the past few decades. And with Seoul suffering from a number of affordability issues, including a housing shortage, Busan’s mayor, Park Heong-joon, is trying to attract youth and talent to his hometown.

Park is engaged in a formidable fight, tackling an issue that some might call second-city syndrome. Young people and investment are increasingly sucked into the world’s largest cities, leaving a greying population behind in smaller ones. Park, who is bidding to host the World Expo in Busan in 2030, says that levelling the playing field between regions is pivotal for a country’s success – and that his mission cannot wait. “Once upon a time we used to accept that the theory of selection and concentration was best in terms of economies of scale,” Park tells Monocle. “But now everybody is trying to go to Seoul for everything – and talent follows them.”

Park claims that his country’s paltry birth rate – the world’s lowest at 0.84 children per woman – is also attributable to the massive economic pre-eminence of its capital city. A hyper-competitive society that pushes people to chase a single version of success in Seoul is leaving those who don’t achieve it unhappy and in financial hardship, meaning that they are less likely to want to start a family, he says.

Park’s measure of a city’s quality of life is how well it can support the development of individual potential. To achieve that for his birthplace, his plans are numerous and ambitious. There are infrastructure upgrades in the works such as a new international airport that Park says will be accessible in 15 minutes from the city centre thanks to a hydrogen-powered bullet train. More creative plans include the construction of fully self-sustainable floating communities, co-sponsored by the UN-Habitat, and a new opera house. Park hopes that both will elicit a chorus of approval from citizens.

Getting on track

Better late than never is perhaps not the best epithet for a new train service but, after an 11-year wait, Honolulu’s light-rail system is finally on the move. The first phase of the network is set to depart in July and will run from the rapidly growing suburb of East Kapolei to the Aloha Stadium along nine new stations.

Elevated above the typically gridlocked streets of Hawaii’s capital, the system is the US’s first driverless train network and, when completed in 2031, will span the city and connect it to the airport.

The last time that Honolulu had any kind of rolling stock was in 1957, when the last of its trolley buses were finally unhooked from their wires. Today it is a slog to access: the densely populated conurbation currently only has public buses to ferry commuters around. The new network has had its opponents over the years – not to mention allegations of mismanagement and a budget that has ballooned – but getting this sunny city on the rails is long overdue. There’s also dedicated space inside every train car to stash your surfboard.

Military —— USA
Naval gazing

The US Navy’s increasing focus on the Pacific has prompted its first announcement of a new hospital ship in 35 years, USNS Bethesda. The 110-metre-long catamaran will be fitted with three operating theatres and everything that might be found in a non-floating hospital, including mental health services and obstetrics.

Such a vessel will, obviously, be an important resource in the event of conflict but a designated hospital ship, distinguished by all-white livery with a giant red cross, can also be a significant soft-power asset that allows the country whose flag it carries to look good while doing good. The US Navy’s current hospital ships, the hulking 1,000-bed craft USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy – both originally built as oil tankers – are regularly deployed as a benign American presence (and provided some reassurance on the home front in the early stages of the pandemic, docked in New York and Los Angeles respectively). China has sent its hospital ship Daishan Dao on humanitarian missions to several theatres where Beijing has more hard-headed economic and strategic interests.

“Bethesda appears to be a considerable advance,” Sidharth Kaushal, research fellow in sea power at the Royal United Services Institute, tells Monocle. “It can operate in shallower waters than predecessor vessels and is much faster. There is an emphasis on speed and ability to operate in austere conditions.”

A conflict requiring the services of a ship such as Bethesda is not a certainty. A natural disaster whose victims would benefit from its presence is.

The FOREIGN DESK
Andrew Mueller on…
Summit cities

The 2023 Nato summit will be held in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, on 11 and 12 July. Monocle Radio’s The Foreign Desk will be there and you’ll be able to hear the fruits of our labours on 15 July. There are two reasons why Vilnius is a sound choice of location. One is what Vilnius is: a delightful city. The other is where Vilnius is: a 40-minute drive from the border with Russia’s client state Belarus to the east, two and a half hours by road from the border with Russia’s Baltic exclave Kaliningrad to the west, about the same distance from the strategic pinch point of the Suwalki Gap. Vilnius is on Nato’s front line: the symbolism of the alliance meeting here, of all places, is not subtle.

Preparations for taking The Foreign Desk to Vilnius prompted some thinking about what makes a city a great location for a summit – and what doesn’t. We’ve acquired a bit of expertise in this subject. Over the past year and a bit, some combination of myself and the producers of The Foreign Desk – Emma Searle, Christy O’Grady – have done two Bratislava Globsecs, one Warsaw Security Forum, one Munich Security Conference, one Delphi Economic Forum and last summer’s Nato summit in Madrid.

What we have concluded brings us to a third reason why Vilnius should prove an excellent summit host, which is that the smaller the destination city and the more annoying it is to get to, the better. Vilnius is home to just half a million or so, and is tough to reach without using the kind of airlines that make you wish you had walked.

Munich, Madrid and Warsaw are, obviously, well- connected and therefore convenient. But they’re also easy for attendees to whip in and out of in an afternoon, or to vanish into, where other guests (and importuning journalists) can’t find them. On the opposite end of the scale, Globsec is mostly confined to one riverside hotel, facilitating informal information-sharing and guest-booking: a few of the voices you’ll hear in The Foreign Desk’s Globsec episodes are people we ran into in the coffee queue. And Delphi is tiny and up a big hill about two hours from Athens airport. Everybody is stuck there, so everybody has to speak to everybody else. It is quite difficult not to find yourself sitting next to a prime minister at dinner.

There are reasons why the most productive of the Cold War summits between the US and the USSR was the one that took place in Reykjavík in 1986. Not only had President Ronald Reagan and General-Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev travelled a long way to be there; there wasn’t much else to do once they had arrived.

Andrew Mueller hosts ‘The Foreign Desk’ on Monocle Radio. Listen live at monocle.live/radio every Saturday at midday London time or download as a podcast.

IMAGE: Alamy, HART

Tokyo artist Ken Sobajima is cleaning up Shibuya’s graffiti, one wall at a time

Graffiti isn’t as much of a blight on the Tokyo landscape as it is on so many other cities but it does pop up with annoying frequency on Monocle’s home turf, around busy Shibuya. When it does, as we discovered outside our office, those responsible tend to be less Banksy and more, well, bland. After some negotiation with our landlord, the local Shibuya government got involved and sent a team to refresh our building. On the appointed day, we were surprised to see a stylish duo in white lab coats, fashionable trainers and baseball caps hard at work restoring our wall to pristine greyness. The group, Clean and Art, is led by artist Ken Sobajima, who started removing graffiti five years ago. “When I first came to Shibuya, I thought that nobody cared because there was so much graffiti,” he tells Monocle. “But once I talked to people, I discovered that everyone was bothered by it.”

At first, Sobajima cleaned walls voluntarily. But two years in, he formalised the business with a core team of seven. He now reckons that he’s cleaned more than 1,000 walls and even lampposts on Shibuya Crossing. Sobajima is also well-versed in making street art himself, often painting his own (legal) murals in Tokyo – colourful works that brighten bus stations and dreary buildings. Interestingly, Sobajima has a curious recognition from the graffiti world and has even appeared in a magazine on the subject.

Today, Monocle is standing on a busy street in Ebisu with Sobajima as he prepares to begin cleaning. He and his colleague Hisayoshi Yamauchi (pictured, on right, with Sobajima), a web and graphic designer – both wearing custom-ordered lab coats from Harajuku fashion company Beams – are fixing the wall of a company dormitory, where a repeat offender has left his tag in simple, metre-high letters.

Armed with a full set of rollers, Sobajima and Yamauchi begin to paint over the letters with care, matching the colour so perfectly that the repair job is impossible to spot. “Being an artist helps me do the colour matching,” says Sobajima, adding that it’s always important to get the job done right. “If the wall looks patched up, it only invites more graffiti.”

As they clean, several passers-by stop to thank them for their work. “We’re providing a service,” says Sobajima. “The point is that the graffiti is illegal and unwanted, no matter how good it might be.” And there’s always more work to do. Recently, Sobajima took time out to clean a wall on a trip to New York, where he was exhibiting his own art.

Meanwhile, at home in Tokyo, he’s noticed an uptick in graffiti tourists – people who combine travel with a spot of casual vandalism – since borders opened last year. But this practice, he explains, is by no means a new phenomenon. For example, the anonymous (and highly regarded) French artist Invader left a tiled version of Osamu Tezuka’s cartoon Astro Boy on a bridge in Shibuya nearly a decade ago.

“The problem is that once you have one piece of graffiti, it attracts others,” he tells Monocle. But surely a freshly painted wall is an irresistible temptation for determined defacers? “Only the most confident would be the first to put their name on a clean surface,” he says. As for Monocle’s own freshly painted wall, we’re sorry to report that within weeks, it was sullied with a fresh tangle of graffiti.
clean-and-art.com

Prime movers

1.
Bushra Afreen
Dhaka
Asia’s first chief heat officer in a rapidly warming city.

In May, as the heatwave season began in Asia, Bangladeshi social activist Bushra Afreen assumed her role as the continent’s first chief heat officer (CHO) for her hometown, Dhaka. Before she was given the position, Afreen led a successful campaign to reduce high temperatures in the country’s clothing factories, where the mercury can regularly exceed 40c. “People in Bangladesh have always been used to a hot and humid environment but the urban heat-island effect has worsened the consequences of climate change,” Afreen tells Monocle. “All you see are buildings and barely any trees, and everyone is packed together. Those built-up surfaces absorb a lot of heat.”

In 2021 a report by the World Bank warned that Dhaka, with a population of 23 million, was moving towards a permanent state of extreme heat. Afreen knows that she has no time to waste. “One of the first things that I started working on was to build public awareness of extreme heat as a public-health crisis,” she says. “I’ve been working with hospitals and healthcare centres to help with messaging and to reach citizens.” This community engagement is a crucial part of her approach to the role. “I want to work with my community and listen to the most vulnerable because heat in Dhaka doesn’t affect everybody equally.” Her appointment makes her the newest cho of a handful worldwide; the others are in Miami, Athens, Santiago de Chile, Monterrey, Freetown, Melbourne and Los Angeles. All are women, which Afreen says is no coincidence. “It’s very much intentional because heat, and climate disasters in general, affect women the most.”

When Monocle spoke to Afreen in June, she was getting ready to launch her next programme: an urban greening project. “We need to increase our tree canopy to provide shade and cool down the city, particularly in informal settlements and low-income residential zones. Those are the areas where they are needed the most.” It won’t be an easy task to transform the concrete jungle that is Dhaka, one of the world’s most densely populated cities, but Afreen remains hopeful. “We need to be super aggressive with our nature solutions because they are the only way to recover what we have lost to urbanisation and build up our resilience quickly.”

2.
Washington Fajardo
Rio de Janeiro
The Carioca urbanist bringing new life to downtown Rio.

The Rio Carnival takes over the city centre every year but few respectable Cariocas would deign to live there. Though almost 40 per cent of the population works downtown, only 4 per cent calls it home. This has long puzzled urbanist Washington Fajardo and inspired him to draft a successful scheme, Reviver Centro (“Revive Downtown”), to build more apartments and increase the area’s residential population. The pandemic left 40 office buildings vacant there and led to more than 500 street-level business closures, including those of many iconic restaurants. Public safety suffered and a census found that there were 7,000 rough sleepers. “Rio’s downtown emptied out worse than the centre of any other Brazilian city,” says Fajardo.

Eduardo Paes, who was mayor during Rio’s 2016 Summer Olympics, was returned to City Hall in January 2021 and brought in Fajardo, his former adviser, to head up the city’s urban planning institute and revitalise downtown. Fajardo studied how US cities had emerged from the fiscal crises of the 1970s and 1980s, and travelled to Boston, Cincinnati, Detroit and Philadelphia to find out how they had grown their downtown residential populations.

Fajardo rented a flat in the neighbourhood to see it from a resident’s perspective. He launched a public dialogue and canvassed property developers to ascertain why they weren’t willing to convert some empty office buildings into homes. It wouldn’t make sense financially, they told him, so he drafted legislation that created a bonus: for every 100 sq m of residential units in the centre, property firms would earn the right to buy an additional 40 sq m of planning approval in the city’s most lucrative areas. The fees, in turn, went into an affordable-rental-housing scheme and improvements in the downtown public realm.

Since the initiative launched in July 2021, it has enticed developers to transform offices into 2,682 new apartments across 26 buildings. Fajardo is eager to turn the page on downtown Rio’s monocultural identity and inject a bit of the carnival spirit into it year-round. “The model of central business districts dehumanised downtowns,” he says. “We still celebrate Carnival downtown. I want to create urbanism through revelry.”

3.
Kaisa Viitanen
Helsinki
The activist transforming Helsinki’s courtyards into hidden oases.

Many residential courtyards in Helsinki have been converted into parking areas and rubbish-collection points. As a result, residents have forsaken them. Kaisa Viitanen co-founded a grass-roots movement to reclaim these grey, bleak spaces and turn them into urban living rooms. “We started by planting flowers and adding greenery,” she tells monocle in Helsinki’s Punavuori neighbourhood. “Other people followed our example and, all of a sudden, I started seeing flowers being planted everywhere.”

Last year the city gave Viitanen and her Korttelipihat Takaisin (“Reclaim Block Courtyards”) movement funding to put together a practical guide that citizens can follow to turn their courtyards into green spaces. “That has several benefits,” she says. “It fosters a stronger sense of community, improves air quality and helps the residents of a block to get to know each other.” There is no predetermined model of how to do this, however: some courtyards have been turned into mini-parks with trees and grassland, while others feature raised flowerbeds, play areas for children or barbecues.

What they all have in common is that they are social spaces where residents can come together. “Some cook, some do yoga and some build nesting sites for urban birds,” says Viitanen. In the Käpylä neighbourhood, which consists of mid-century wooden villas and terraced houses, the elderly residents of one apartment block have become local celebrities after turning their courtyard into a green oasis and have become expert gardeners in the process. “Sometimes elderly people in cities can feel lonely. This kind of activity gives them a sense of purpose and belonging.”

What advice would she give to those who want to make a difference in their cities? “Set an example and others will follow,” says Viitanen. Often they just need inspiration and someone to show them that it’s possible. “People assume that changing the urban environment is a cumbersome process that involves rules, committees and political connections – but all it takes is a group of like-minded people to get things started.” And, of course, an open-minded city administration that trusts its citizens to know what’s best for them.

4.
Pat Hanson
Toronto
The architect building beauty into functional urban infrastructure.

Look towards the eastern shore of Lake Ontario in downtown Toronto and an asymmetrical silhouette will catch your eye. Clad in smooth, light-grey concrete, one of the best-designed recent additions to the city happens to be a storm-water processing plant. “With all of our work, we try to think about how the landscape performs with the building,” the plant’s architect, Pat Hanson, founding partner of local practice gh3*, tells Monocle. “The idea of it being a working landscape that is in sync with what we have built is important to us.”

Many of the essential facilities that allow a city to work are either built away from public view or designed to favour function over form. Hanson’s goal is to pull back the curtain and explore these functional elements. “It’s so interesting that we walk around the city and all of this stuff is going on underfoot,” she says. “Nobody really thinks about it.”

That principle influenced her design for the sleek slopes of the storm-water facility’s roof. The sight of water rolling off these when it’s raining serves as a subtle visual suggestion to passers-by about what is happening beneath: the flow of storm water into the plant, which cleanses it of detritus before releasing it into Lake Ontario.

“Many practices might just take the architecture of infrastructure and do it the way that it has been done before,” she says. “We see it as an opportunity to design something in a more authentic, unique way.” gh3*‘s other recent works, including Edmonton’s much-loved Borden Natural Swimming Pool and vast new Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage, have similarly elevated notions of what well-designed pieces of urban infrastructure can add to the built environment.

“Cities know that they have to pay more attention to the quality of design and set the bar a little higher,” says Hanson. Mayor’s offices that have enlightened procurement departments and appoint city architects are leading that charge most effectively, she adds. “The successes of these projects have made people think much more about architecture because these buildings have become a point of pride.”

5.
Yu Tominaga and Mayumi Kawaguchi
Tokyo
The couple growing vegetables in the heart of Japan’s bustling capital.

Organic crops and beehives probably aren’t the first things that spring to mind when you think of Tokyo. Yet, in a corner of densely populated Itabashi, these are what you’ll find. Hasune Farm is a labour of love for Yu Tominaga and his partner, Mayumi Kawaguchi. This area and neighbouring Nerima were once full of farms supplying produce to Edo (now Tokyo). But after the Second World War, such rural spots were transformed by rapid urbanisation.

After Kawaguchi’s father passed away, she had to make a decision about the future of the fields, which had been in her family for generations. “One idea was to sell the farm and develop it,” she tells Monocle. “But we felt that land like this in the middle of Tokyo was very precious.” Tominaga was working in marketing for Sony but decided to switch to farming. He went back to college part-time to learn about organic agriculture, then worked for a year with another farmer and fully took over in 2019. Today the couple grow more than 50 herbs and vegetables. Companion plants such as aubergine and dill grow alongside each other while bees are kept in hives at the edge of the farm. The couple are trying out an old variety of rice that doesn’t require watery paddy fields. A few neighbours might complain about noisy farm machines but most consider Hasune an asset to the neighbourhood. Hundreds of children come to the farm from local schools to help out; three times a week, a farm shop opens and produce is picked to order.

The couple supply to restaurants but also to their culinary venture, Hasune Plant, which is housed nearby in Kawaguchi’s parents’ home. The building was gently renovated and landscaped, providing the perfect backdrop for chef Takayuki Shiraishi to make dishes such as soramame bean and tofu mousse, and sea bream with courgettes, grapefruit purée and rucola flowers. Diners who come to the restaurant might have no idea that the farm is only moments away. A couple of egg-laying hens roam next door and Tominaga uses food waste to make compost. “Urban farming has huge potential,” he says. “It adds so much to the local community and there’s no distance between us and our customers.”