Reading for Battle

Battle Readings is a regularly updated compilation of articles, essays, and opinion pieces relevant to the themes of the Battle of Ideas.

Choose a theme from the listing on the left to narrow your search, or view all readings.

Technology & The City

City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age
City is the ultimate handbook for the archetypal city and contains main sections on ‘History', ‘Customs and Language', ‘Districts', ‘Transport', ‘Money', ‘Work', ‘Tourist Sites', ‘Shops and markets', ‘Nightlife', etc., and mini-essays on anything and everything from Babel, Tenochtitlán and Ellis Island to Beijing, Mumbai and New York, and from boulevards, suburbs, shanty towns and favelas, to skylines, urban legends and the sacred.

PD Smith, Bloomsbury, 10 May 2012

Liverpool Waters – review
If it goes ahead, the multibillion-pound Liverpool Waters scheme will destroy the city's historic character
Rowan Moore, Observer, 6 May 2012

Another country
London’s separateness from the rest of Britain becomes more pronounced every year
Neil O'Brien, Spectator, 14 April 2012

'Don't break the internet': How an idiot's slogan stole your privacy...
For 15 years internet companies have been waging a war against any kind of laws that establish properties and permissions for digital things. Every attempt to do so has been bitterly fought. It's the one constant in Silicon Valley's battles against the copyright industries.
Andrew Orlowski, Register, 9 April 2012

Overlooked heritage
A world heritage site award from Unesco is seen as a boon for tourism and those looking to raise the status of a city, but there can be unforeseen consequences when it comes to development
Simon Thurley, Financial Times, 30 March 2012

Statsblog: unequal cities are often some of the most economically successful
Cambridge has very low levels of inequality, but this may be a sign of poor planning policy not economic success
Paul Swinney, Guardian, 8 March 2012

Istanbul sees history razed in the name of regeneration
Turkey's cultural capital is undergoing a huge construction programme that is driving out communities
Constanze Letsch, Guardian, 1 March 2012

Projectos do “Performance Architecture” privilegiam participação dos cidados
As cinco propostas de intervenções urbanas do concurso foram seleccionadas este sábado. "Apropriação da cidade" e "participação activa do público" são os temas-chave
P3, 26 February 2012

Triumph of the City
In Triumph of the City, Glaeser takes us around the world and into the mind of the modern city – from Mumbai to Paris to Rio to Detroit to Shanghai, and to any number of points in between – to reveal how cities think, why they behave in the manners that they do, and what wisdom they share with the people who inhabit them.

Edward Glaeser, Pan, 16 February 2012

Facebook valuation: $100 billion for what?
Yes, if FB were a country it would be the third largest. It would also be the most unproductive country ever.
Norman Lewis, spiked, 15 February 2012


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Capitalism: kill or cure?

"The rules of the game at The Battle of Ideas makes beating about the bush impossible. When you are given 5 minutes to make your point, you either say something essential, or you reveal that you have nothing really to say. This eliminates 'the unbearable lightness' of speculation that haunts public debate."
Albena Azmanova, social philosopher, political commentator and activist

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