Journal
Reports, analyses and features from all 195 countries - the journalism behind the journeys.
Count the Lit Windows
A historic centre on a Tuesday evening in February, and the arithmetic that emptied it. Nobody decided to hollow out the old town; several thousand owners each decided, correctly, that visitors pay more than neighbours.
A City Built for the People Who Live in It
Proximity planning is a policy about residents that has quietly become the best thing to happen to walking around a strange city — and the reason a hire car will collect a fine four weeks after you returned it.
The Plaque and the Tenancy
A World Heritage inscription protects the fabric of a town and advertises its address. The management plan is written about stone by people with no housing budget, which is why so many listed places keep their façades exactly and lose their inhabitants gradually.
The Village Learns at the Premiere
A production spends three weeks in a valley and leaves. What arrives afterwards is set by a release schedule rather than a season, lands on a single hillside, and is captured by the village or by nobody depending on one variable.
What Reaches the Quayside
A single ship can put several thousand people ashore in a morning and remove them six hours later. The arguments are usually anecdotal; the arithmetic is not, and it explains why berthing caps have spread faster than bans.
A Hundred People in One Alley
Overtourism sounds like a quantity problem. Nearly every measured case is a concentration problem — a few streets, a few days, an afternoon peak set by twenty scheduling decisions. Including, this magazine should admit, decisions like ours.