Weekly Filet #157: Half a Miracle. And more.
«Our most beautiful buildings must be in our poorest areas.» This is one of the key assumptions that helped turn Medellín from Columbia's deadly capital of cocaine into a model for urbanism in merely two decades. Next City takes a close look at how the transformation was enabled – and what its drawbacks are. Francis Fukuyama called Medellín's story «half a miracle», it sure makes for a great read.
→ Latin America’s New Superstar (Next City)
My jaw dropped further with every minute into the video. Ben Sack draws huge cities with incredible detail. Unconfirmed quote of his: «My most beautiful buildings must be everywhere, and then some.»
→ Hand-drawn cityscapes (Kottke.org)
Early cartographers just drew elephants when they didn't know the territory. A good reminder of the (inherent) inaccuracy and (deliberate) bias in maps – and what it means that a commercial product, Google Maps, shapes everyones ideas of world geography.
→ Why Google Maps gets Africa wrong (Think Africa Press)
«A government threatens its own legitimacy by relying on its own dictionary.» A linguistic take on NSA-surveillance.
→ Dragnet Surveillance and the English Language (The Baffler)
A 2,428-mile road trip along the border between the USA and Mexico, recounted in a great format.
→ Borderland (NPR)