Editor Tom Pattinson introduces the new issue of Positive News magazine, which is out now
What makes a city linger in the mind? Perhaps the glimmering skyline that comes into view through a train window. Maybe the smells and sounds of an unfamiliar street at dusk, or the reassuring walk home through a familiar neighbourhood. Cities are shaped as much by culture and community as by bricks and buildings. They are places where ideas collide, traditions take root and millions of lives overlap, day after day.
In the Jan-Mar issue of Positive News magazine, we take a close look at urban living, not as an abstract concept but as a lived experience. We imagine what a city designed from scratch today might look like tomorrow, and explore how new technologies are already reshaping streets and buildings in older cities, making them more efficient, easier to navigate, more sustainable and, crucially, more humane.
We also turn our attention to the people shaping their cities from the ground up. From local groups taking over key businesses to organisations working to make urban life more welcoming and functional, these stories show how cities evolve through collective effort, not just grand plans.
Public debate often paints a bleak picture of urban life, but when we looked closely at the data and spoke to those working on the front line, a more balanced story emerged. While some economic crimes are increasing, violent crime, including knife crime, is falling in many places. In fact, across much of the world, homicide rates continue to decline. It is a reminder that headlines rarely tell the whole story.
Elsewhere, we speak to author Ian McEwan about how he imagines the future, visit a theatre company opening creative doors for people with experience of the prison system and meet older activists who have traded slippers for spray cans. We travel to France to a care home created for the LGBTQIA+ community, and to Denmark to explore what an offline holiday can offer.
Together, they show that the future of our cities rests less in their architecture than in the choices, care and creativity of the people who inhabit them.
Cover illustration: Andrea Manzati
