The Civilization video games may not convey actual history very well, but they’ve encouraged generations of young people to learn more about the past.

Urban policymakers are adopting “alternative” economic development approaches such as doughnut economics and the circular economy as part of efforts to address ecological challenges in parallel to concerns about enduring social and economic inequalities. These alternative approaches are often combined in “pick-and-mix” fashion in efforts to realize complementary and mutually reinforcing benefits; mobilize diverse actors, including citizens and politicians, around plural visions of change; and address a range of city-specific challenges. However, a prerequisite for “picking and mixing” different approaches successfully is careful consideration of the logic of these approaches and how they might be put into practice alongside each other. We draw on Sabato’s notion of the eco-social-growth trilemma to suggest a need to surface potential tensions, especially when combining approaches that have different emphases on the synergies or trade-offs between economic (growth), ecological, and social objectives. The paper concludes by proposing a decision-making framework to enable policymakers to harness tensions productively by exploring and articulating the possibilities and limits of a “pick-and-mix” approach.

The campaign to propagate a new generation of think tanks “with Chinese characteristics” has been one of Xi Jinping's signature projects. Charting the…

Loughborough, Heriot-Watt and Glasgow corresponded with companies concerned about campus protests

The world is crossing the 1.5°C global warming limit, perhaps exceeding 2°C soon after. What is to be done when these boundaries, set by the Paris Agreement, have been passed? In the overshoot era, sc...

I don’t understand AI enough to properly dislike it. And I’m curious as to why the University is pushing this tool so much if it inherently devalues learning. So I immersed myself in artificial intell...

On civil society.

If Europe wants to build a new AI Stack it should stop listening to critics who claim to lead the way but only offer resistance.

The party’s right wing won the peace after the Corbyn wars. But do they know what they want now?

Why British Parties Can't Make Peace with Their Actual Voters