Interesting chart on the fall and rise of Asia in the global economy (and the rise and fall of the "West") courtesy of @data.ft.com

Even Louis Wirth, arguably highly influential in crystalizing this dichotomy, realized towards the end of his life that it was a mistake
(9/10)

We think this is super valuable & offers important insights (e.g. that GDP/urbanization correlation is much weaker than thought…) But we wanted to push it one step further, so we introduce the idea of a Population Proximity Index. More on that in the paper.
(7/10)

If urbanness is essentially a function of population concentration, rather than development, then we can see places like refugee camps & informal settlements as urban. From this POV, we can even interpret festivals such as Burning Man as instances of “ephemeral urbanism” (5/10)

So we can think about characterizing urban places along two axes: (1) population concentration and (2) ‘development’ (4/10)

Yet the kernel of a more parsimonious & universally applicable definition can be found in some of these very same canonical texts: urbanism = living with strangers. And this, we argue, is essentially a function of population concentration: more people, more strangers. (3/10)

First, we argue that it’s important to decouple the concepts & measures of economic development & urbanness. From Weber to Wirth to national statistical offices around the world, these concepts have often been conflated
(2/10)

🔔New paper alert!🔔
*People make places urban*
in @NatCities
w/ @levijohnwolf.bsky.social

#cities #urbanism #urbanization
We address that deceptively simple question: What makes a place urban? (TL;DR - the answer is in the title!). A short thread on key arguments
(1/10)

Striking chart!