Category: Article
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Why are so many American cities not “walkable”?
I have, by now, been to many cities. I have seen pretty, pastel-coloured cities, I have seen grey, skyscraper cities, I have seen cities that were barely worth the name. But Phoenix was something altogether new, unlike anything I’ve encountered before. The huge roads of multiple lanes were more like motorways, and the pavements were…
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Why do so many Welsh people go to Australia?
While walking past the reception in the hostel in Darwin, I heard the receptionist tell a group of young women, ‘We don’t get many Welsh people here’. Attention grabbed, I turned and asked, ‘You don’t?’. It turned out that several of the group were from Wales, including a girl from Pwllheli – Welsh-speaking Gog (Northener),…
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Why are Chinese communities so much more visible in Malaysia than in Thailand?
Kuala Lumpur was strikingly similar to Bangkok in many ways. Ultra-modern infrastructure, skyscrapers, and massive shopping centres, right next to tattered, grimy streets in oppressive tropical heat. But there was a key difference: where Bangkok had the shining spires of Buddhist temples and the Grand Palace, Kuala Lumpur had mosques, Hindu temples, and at least…
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Why does Kigali have so much undeveloped land?
One of Kigali’s most pleasant features puzzled me. The city’s most prominent charm was the abundant greenery, and not just from the prominent tropical flowers that lined the streets, but also the frequent swathes of grass and trees dotted around its hills. These weren’t parks, they were simply patches of land without buildings. Gaping holes…
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How does racialisation work in Panama?
The concept of race is a strange thing. It has long been debunked as a pseudoscience, but has proven to have a long afterlife, with “racial identity” being a hot topic even in countries that don’t classify their citizens by “race” (the UK census notes people’s “ethnicity”, not “race”). Half of this is because the…
Wandering/Wondering 