Milan Design Week comes to a close this weekend but it’s not exactly a neat conclusion. The presence of industries with design adjacencies (namely car brands, hospitality groups and fashion houses) was in retreat for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic, with budgets tightening amid economic and geopolitical volatility. No overarching aesthetic emerged to rival last year’s dominance of stainless steel and its seductive palette of deep reds, nor the cream bouclé and soft shapes of the year before that. It seems that the zeitgeist is too elusive, too fractured to be neatly summed up.

Nonetheless, Milan Design Week did its usual sweeping through the Lombard capital, prying open the courtyard gates of palazzos for events and installations. At cocktail parties in church cloisters, DJs became high priests for the night, lording over congregations of characters plucked out of a film by Paolo Sorrentino – feather dresses and shiny suits included. In the streets of Porta Venezia, negronis were consumed until the early hours of the morning under banners blazing “Design is act” – one to ponder on the walk home.

In the light of day, exhibitions offering a more intellectual narrative proved to be the most popular. Visitors to the brutalist Torre Velasca queued for hours to see showcases on Polish modernism and the legacy of Jorge Zalszupin, the Poland-born designer associated with Brazilian modernism. It was a soft-power coup from the Visteria Foundation – the Polish cultural institute dedicated to the global promotion of the country’s design and craft scene. The Triennale Milano, meanwhile, explored the legacy of design across three exhibitions: one chronicling the history of Danish furniture company Fredericia; another about British designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby; and finally an inside look at the Eames House – now being developed on by Spanish manufacturer Kettal.

Elsewhere, intellectualisation went a step further by removing design completely from the equation and focusing on ideas. This was most apparent with the fashion houses partaking in Milan Design Week – and perhaps a hint at the deeper existentialism pervading the industry as it recalibrates after a period of change. Jil Sander’s creative director, Simone Bellotti, launched the Reference Library, an exhibition of 60 titles chosen by the likes of Swedish singer Lykke Li and American film director Sofia Coppola. Miu Miu returned with its book club, which explored the politics of desire through the writings of French novelist Annie Ernaux and Ghanaian author Ama Ata Aidoo. Prada’s annual symposium, Prada Frames, looked at the role of image-making as a feature of our contemporary culture.

This all coincides with the rise of collectable design, be it of one-off marvels, rare antiques or objects that blur the line between design and art. Even the week’s anchor event, Salone del Mobile, a bastion of industrial and contract design, is getting in on the action with Salone Raritas, a new section of the fair reserved for collectable work.

Ultimately, there is some irony that the design world – an industry preoccupied with form and aesthetics – is seeking to transcend itself. But as brands compete for buyers and try to make sense of the times, it’s perhaps unsurprising that their first instinct is to search for a deeper meaning – in whichever shape or form it might appear.

Grace Charlton is Monocle’s associate editor of fashion and design. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

At Portuguese construction and engineering group DST’s sprawling hub in the northern city of Braga, a landscape of factories and warehouses is punctuated by site-specific artworks by the likes of Pedro Cabrita Reis and Miguel Palma. Workers in hi-vis vests and trucks move through the grounds, which also host open-air poetry readings, theatre performances and philosophy classes. It is an unusual convergence of worlds: the hardy, industrial reality of construction, and the utopian terrain of art and ideas. Yet DST’s CEO, José Teixeira, has placed culture at the centre of the business his father founded in the 1940s – first as a quarry, and today comprising more than 60 companies, from telecommunications to renewables, and about 4,000 employees worldwide.

“Architecture, art, philosophy and the search for beauty play an instrumental role in the products that companies create,” says Teixeira, who has amassed one of the country’s most significant private art collections and moves seamlessly between speaking about prefabricated homes and Susan Sontag quotes. Now, Teixeira is extending his ambition beyond the company grounds with the opening of Muzeu, a contemporary art museum in Braga’s historic centre. 

If DST’s campus brings art into the everyday lives of factory workers, the museum brings something of the factory floor to its visitors. Housed in a former courthouse adjacent to the town hall, the building’s five floors have been reworked with an industrial language of exposed steel beams and concrete, conceived by local architect José Carvalho Araújo. Other elements – such as sculptural bronze doors by Portuguese artist José Pedro Croft and ochre brick roofs – reference Renaissance Florence. Teixeira seems to embrace the role of the art patron. “I would like DST to be seen as a renaissance figure of the 21st century,” he says. “A patron in the sense that artists, poets, novelists, musicians shouldn’t have to wait for the state to step in.”

The inaugural exhibition, Sejamos realistas, exijamos o impossível (Let us be realistic, let us demand the impossible), brings together works by major international names, such as Alex Katz, Nan Goldin and Annie Leibovitz, alongside leading Portuguese artists, including Ângela Ferreira, Pedro Calapez and Ana Vidigal. Other pieces by both emerging and established artists in Teixeira’s 1,500-strong collection also feature, while there are also a series of planned conferences, performances and workshops. A permanent space on the top floor is dedicated to works by Anselm Kiefer. “It’s the only one of its kind – if you want to see it, you have to come to Braga,” says Teixeira.

As Portugal’s third-largest city, Braga has long drawn visitors to its historic centre and baroque churches. The city also has one of the country’s highest birth rates, along with a young and dynamic workforce in engineering and technology. Yet its cultural programming has remained understated, until now. With Muzeu, Teixeira hopes that will shift. “We aspire to the Bilbao effect,” he says. 
muzeu.com

The Foreign Desk has become a regular visitor to – and participant in – various diplomatic events: the Munich Security Conference, Globsec, the Arctic Circle Assembly, the Black Sea Security Forum in Odessa, the Warsaw Security Forum and a few Nato summits. (If any organisers of any similar wing-dings are reading, all invitations considered, etc.)

You could probably spend your entire year bouncing from one such beano to the next, draping your neck with sufficient laminates that standing upright becomes difficult by about August. There’s also the chance of being appointed defence minister of some minor Balkan republic by accident or as a result of a card game. Indeed, I suspect that there are people who do live like this or who wonder, as we bump into them in yet another queue for yet another buffet, whether Team Foreign Desk might actually be itinerant freeloaders.

The question that inevitably arises is whether any of this gabbing is doing much good. The Delphi Economic Forum in Greece, from where this dispatch is sent, seems as good a location as any to ponder this question – certainly, many trickier questions have been pondered just up the street at Ancient Delphi, where the cloak-clad sages of 20-odd centuries ago consulted the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo, otherwise known as the Delphic Oracle. For what it might be worth in the current context, she might have suggested to one impetuous and proverbially acquisitive ruler – the Lydian king Croesus – that picking a fight with Persia was a terrific idea, nothing could possibly go wrong and so forth: Croesus and the Lydians got duly stomped.

The obvious jokes and/or deft philosophical observations about the significance of the location of the Delphi Economic Forum have probably all been done, not least by this correspondent. The theme of this year’s event is “The Shock of the New”, to which it might be reasonably retorted that we, as a planet and a species, have possibly reached the point at which shocks are nothing new and the new is no longer shocking. Greece, for example, is presently contending with the fact that a decent chunk of its immense global shipping fleet is becalmed by a conflict between the US, Israel and Iran. On Wednesday, a Greek-owned, Liberia-flagged freighter, Epaminondas, was fired on in the Strait of Hormuz by an Iranian gunboat. 

For most non-US Western democracies, the set text of the foreseeable future is likely to remain the address given to the World Economic Forum in January by Canadian prime minister Mark Carney – the still-rippling impact of which is in itself something of an advertisement for events such as these. Carney’s speech was a call for co-operation among  the world’s middle powers in order to protect each other’s interests in the escalating absence of US leadership. Countries of roughly that rank are always well represented at Delphi. Speakers this year include Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Albanian prime minister Edi Rama, Prince Albert II of Monaco, and ministers from all over an Eastern Mediterranean/Balkan region that’s full of small to medium-sized countries with good reason to be nervous about any upsetting of the global order.

As one such leader told me on the first afternoon of this year’s Delphi Economic Forum, there is always value in turning up in person. “When you can look them in the eye,” says president Alar Karis of Estonia, “you get more confidence: are we dealing with the right people, the right person? So, this helps to continue, or to develop, a collaboration.” Great things can happen at an espresso station.

At the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh in 2023, I heard a government minister from an autocratic nation explain the pitfalls of democracy in an unstable world. “Democracy is great,” he said with a wry grin, “but in America every four years you are dealing with a completely different group of people, with different values and priorities.” Two and a half years later, with the US (and the world) in an even more chaotic state than it was then, it’s not difficult to see how his anti-democratic view could seem vindicated. 
 
Given the enfilade of apparently intractable problems arrayed against democratic leaders, you could imagine that many of them would prefer not to have to deal with a restive electorate or rancorous parliament. In the UK this week, prime minister Keir Starmer is once more facing calls to resign over his appointment of the now-disgraced Peter Mandelson as US ambassador. This is the latest in a series of crises that have plagued his premiership.

As UK voters tire of the never-ending political drama, commentators debate whether or not the country has become ungovernable. Of some comfort to the prime minister is the fact that he is not alone – the politics of many wealthy democracies seem more unstable now than they have been in living memory. On the streets of London, Paris and New York, people block out the sounds of their fellow citizens by plugging in to a favoured political podcast, whose producers profit by amping up the din. If, like me, your day is filled with such commentary, it’s easy to feel subsumed in the mire.

Inside and outside the podcast studios, there is a widespread belief that politicians seem incapable of tackling the issues that matter most to voters. Their ineptitude combined with our dissatisfaction does sound like rather a good recipe for ungovernability and might be why some polls have found a growing fondness for aspects of autocracy. So, is the problem that we are cursed with an exceptionally poor batch of leaders, that our standards are too high or simply that we have the wrong system of government? Well, a little bit of all three, compounded by the impact of technology.

I’m increasingly of the opinion that the most maddening and, therefore, dangerous thing about the internet is that it gives us the illusion of omniscience. Since all worldly information is seemingly at the tips of our fingers, then the solutions to all worldly ills must be too. And politicians, being ultimately the same as all the rest of us, believe this too. Their consequent infighting increases pressure on governments, which feeds into our sense of permacrisis. On top of this is another factor, particularly acute in the UK, that many of our present woes are rooted in economics that are inextricably tied to events happening elsewhere in the world and over which our leaders have little, if any, influence. 

So does this mean that our cacophonous disquiet is the result of too much technology mixed with democracy and that Keir Starmer is actually a good prime minister? No. The truth is that there aren’t simple or even definitive answers to many of the complex challenges facing modern societies. But if any country can ultimately deal with them (by no means a certainty), then it will be one that is capable of adaptation through reform, in which simple but crude solutions are not clamoured for and debate is free and open – ie, a democracy.  

Alexis Self is Monocle’s foreign editor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

As well as our annual Design Awards, the magazine in your hands includes a celebration of watchmaking and the value of timekeeping. So perhaps it’s strange that two of my favourite reports are a tale about a train that fails to depart on schedule and a dispatch from a city neighbourhood where time has, until now, refused to tick along in accordance with the beat of the age.

Let’s start with that rail trip that runs across our Expo pages. Ann Marie Gardner was Monocle’s Americas bureau chief when this title launched in 2007 and I’m pleased to say that, even after she exited from the masthead, she has stayed part of the family. Over the years, Gardner has generously undertaken some gruelling and long reporting trips for Monocle, including jumping aboard a mail ship as it dropped of its parcels at various Atlantic island outposts. When it was suggested that we should send a writer on a two-day train ride north from Winnipeg to the Hudson Bay town of Churchill, in the depths of winter, I knew just who to call.

Churchill is so remote that it cannot be reached by car, only by plane or train. But who would choose the slow option? And what would unfold if you jumped aboard and headed to the polar-bear capital of the High North? Gardner, along with photographer Jesse Chehak, was game to answer these questions and more. Now, I admit that I did feel a little guilty when she sent me a message from the Via Rail train containing pictures of her utilitarian green cabin and describing the train’s very late departure and sluggish progress across the flat frozen landscape. But the story she got is a gem. It’s a report that takes you to the heart of Canada – and Canadians – but it is also a rumination on the pleasures that come from allowing time to pass slowly and giving up on watching the clock.

The other story in this issue where time is of the essence is set in downtown Cairo and has been reported by Mary Holland and photographed by Rena Efendi. The duo look at how this sleepy, unkempt, timeworn neighbourhood is being revived – but will its magical shops, cafés and apartments, which have until now ignored the calls of modernity, be erased or spoilt?

And then there are the watches and the people who wear them. It’s not hard to know the precise time of day – it’s there on your laptop screen as you type and staring back at you when you glance at your phone. So why do so many men and women choose to wear a wristwatch, a ticking mechanical contraption, instead of allowing their electronic devices to keep them on schedule? I count myself among this cohort of watch wearers and, for me, it’s simple. I want time to have meaning and the seconds to slip away with some grace.

I have two nice watches – I know. The first was bought with some money left to me by my parents; the second was a gift that marked a special anniversary. I wear them on alternate days and whenever I snap the metal bracelets tight on my wrist, I think, without fail, either of two people who I miss or a job that has made me who I am. It got me wondering about why others do the same so I asked our associate editor, Grace Charlton, to speak to people – including a chef, a photographer, an ambassador and a fashion designer – about the watch that accompanies them throughout their day and also about what time means to them. She has produced a report about watches, yes, but also about how we all judge time in very diferent ways.

Finally, there are the dogs: the watch dogs. This was the idea of our creative director, Richard Spencer Powell, and runs on our fashion pages. It’s a delight and simply features wonderful dogs and great timepieces. My favourite aside was when Rich told me that the team had taken great efforts to ensure that each hound was matched with a watch that echoed its style and demeanour. You can be the judge on their canine and chronometer matching abilities. As always, feel free to send me ideas, thoughts or just the time of day at at@monocle.com.

---

Watch editor: Brenda Tuohy
Stylist: Kyoko Tamoto
Photographer: Jess Bonham
Models: Chilli, Rex, Sid, Kelso, Jaggar, Ezio, Mabel, Cleo, Daphne and Red

The Via Rail Canada website promises an “adventure of a lifetime” – a 1,700km train journey through boreal forest and Arctic tundra from Winnipeg to the subarctic port town of Churchill, the polar-bear capital of the world. It all sounds so swashbuckling, even when it’s the off season for bear spotting (at this time of year they’re out on the ice, hunting seals). After all, there’ll still be the northern lights and the end-of-the-world remoteness to enthral us. Monocle arrives at Winnipeg’s Union Station an hour early for the 12.05 train. The station is almost deserted and we only have a handful of travellers for company. There are no departure boards, no other trains and no shops (though thankfully there are a couple of vending machines). We end up sitting in this cold, echoey hall for almost seven hours; hour after hour, the train is delayed. It finally sets off at 17.45.

Riding the rails

The question arises soon after boarding: will the “magic” of Churchill that tourism websites tout be enough to justify this ride? The Hudson Bay Railway is not the Orient Express. The rail cars, built at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, feel frozen in time. Made to service routes to remote places, their corridors are so narrow that only one person can pass at a time. The single-berth rooms – in a shade of mint green – might once have been considered a marvel of ergonomic design but are lacking by today’s standards. Every berth includes a chair facing a steel pull-down sink resembling those found in prison cells. A toilet, which doubles as a coffee table, is positioned in the centre of the cabin. At night the bed, on a hulking metal frame, slides out on top of the toilet. It’s like sleeping in the bathroom of a commuter train.

Attendant Tev Judd, who has worked on the rails for seven years, gives us a tour. Down the long hallway is a single shower, to be shared between the passengers. Past two sets of bunk beds are bathrooms and the dining car. “Just roll with it,” says Dave, a fellow passenger who works as a photographer for Via Rail Canada. He has done the trip once before and refuses to elaborate further.

For the next two days, the train groans, shakes and rattles along, taking us further into the frozen wilderness at what feels like 30 miles (48km) an hour. It’s like a kids’ train at an amusement park but sometimes slower because in winter the steel tracks contract and can snap. In the tiny towns that we chug through, dogs run up to bark at the train – and then outrun it.

That first night, seven sleeper passengers linger at the metal tables in the fluorescently lit dining car and, unsurprisingly, are in no rush to return to their toilet-stall bedrooms. For dinner, Lana, the cook, recommends the microwaved butter chicken, though she has never tried it. “We bring our own food,” she says, a little disconcertingly. The next morning early birds Francine St Germaine and Michel Vinet are back in the dining car to watch the sunrise. A hot-pink halo forms over a patch of scrubby, tall pine trees like a UFO.

Vinet worked for Via Rail Canada for 28 years – freight from 1974 to 2004, then passenger service until 2013. His whole family has worked on the railroad. “I helped to rebuild this track and it’s the only one left that I haven’t ridden,” he says. “I have always wanted to go to Churchill to see its bears, northern lights and nature.” The train has a capacity of 124 people in coach and 14 with beds. Our train carries 13 in total: nine passengers in sleeper rooms and four crew. This doesn’t count those who get on and off along the way in the coach section.

The map in the carriage shows a string of communities that this single rail line stitches together. These range from small Indigenous towns with populations as small as 148 to Thompson, with about 12,300 residents. People take the train to stock up at the big-box shop in Thompson, then return with plastic bins filled with groceries, supplies, nappies and car parts. After Thompson, there are no roads leading to Churchill so, unless you fly, this is the only way to get there. That first morning, the other inmates have a not-terrible breakfast of scrambled eggs. Heidi, an Inuit woman who works for a non-profit company, is here from Ottawa. She’s on a long break from everyday life and is seeking to return to nature to reflect and reset.

Forest Gustavson, a cheerful, colourfully tattooed wildlife photographer, is making this journey to celebrate his birthday. “The ride gives you time to contemplate our role in the world,” he says. “And it prepares you for your arrival at Churchill, where there are three times more bears than people. Polar bears weigh 2,200lbs [998kg] and can be 15 feet [4.6 metres] tall. And they will hunt humans.” Across his forearm is a bright-green bear tattoo. His T-shirt, meanwhile, features a drawing of a bear and the word “hug”. “Churchill and the Northern Lights will change your life,” he says.

Julie Gaudet, Via Rail Canada’s service manager, has worked on the train for 27 years. She home-schooled her daughter in this dining car. To her, it’s a way of life. “We didn’t shut down during the coronavirus pandemic,” she says. “We couldn’t. This is an essential line.” Aside from service suspensions caused by severe flooding – notably in 2017 – the line has kept running. Today the weather outside is icy yet crisp. Stripped of comfort and connection to the rest of the world, this collection of strangers bands together in the dining car while the landscape rolls by.

---

Day one
Churchill, minus 30C

It feels like a miracle when we actually arrive in Churchill – though the train pulls in at 14.40, instead of the scheduled 09.00. By this point, we have been on board for 45 hours. A brilliant white light greets us: blinding sunshine bouncing off miles of sea ice and snow piled as high as buildings. The cold is difficult to describe. It slices and stabs all over your body at once. The shock of it drags you into the present. You are here. You are alive. So pay attention!

Thankfully, Discover Churchill vans are waiting with heat blasting inside. This is a frontier town, laid out in a grid, with low square blobs of buildings covered in snow. In the 1700s it was the Hudson Bay Company’s fur-trading post. It later evolved into a northern grain port after the railway arrived in 1929. During the Cold War, when the town was home to a military outpost, its resident population soared to 5,000 (today it’s 870). The port operated as a naval base until the 1960s, before reinventing itself as the polar-bear capital of the world. When we visit, the bears are everywhere – just not living specimens. We spot a stuffed one at the train station. Images of them are painted on garages and buildings, and shown on TV at bars and in hotel lobbies. On those screens, we watch them sparring or frolicking in a field of purple flowers; we see mother bears and baby bears being adorable.

In Churchill, you can only safely walk or ride your bike outside in winter, when the bears are away hunting seals. “People know to leave their cars unlocked,” says train attendant Judd. “That way, if you see a polar bear, you can jump in anyone’s car.” Our guide, Drew Hamilton, starts every tour with safety instructions. “Don’t go anywhere alone, ever. Stay away from the beach. No swimming. No jogging. Take this number for Polar Bear Alert: 204675BEAR. If you call, they’ll be there in two minutes. After 22.00, it’s four minutes.”

Hamilton drives us to all of the town’s notable sites, from the murals on brick buildings and the abandoned grain elevator that looms over Churchill like a ghost to the bear-holding facility. Then we head to the edge of Hudson Bay, where the sea has frozen in waves for as far as you can see. This wintry outpost is indeed stunning – and even more so from inside a warm van. But we all sacrifice our comfort to get out and have our pictures taken in front of the most popular tourist attraction here, the polar-bear crossing sign. Later that evening, we witness the northern lights: fluorescent green wisps dancing against a black sky amid twinkling stars. While we jump up and down in the crunching snow to keep warm, the air tastes so clean that we gulp it in, even though it’s so frigid that it hurts to breathe.

---

Day two
Churchill, minus 34.5C

“This is cold even for us,” says Christine Lee, the manager of the Blueberry Inn. We layer up for a two-minute walk across the street to speak to Brooke Biddlecombe at the Churchill HQ of conservation organisation Polar Bears International, where she is a research fellow and polar-bear ecologist working for the University of Alberta. She is investigating the co-existence of tourism and bears in the Churchill area, studying how the animals react depending on the distance of tourist vehicles. “There is no textbook for living with polar bears,” she says. “If I’m walking around town, I always have a bear flare with me. It’s like a firework – a good deterrent. And don’t ever run. They have caught people. Maulings are rare but they do happen.”

Churchill has an impressive alert system. Repeat offenders – bears that keep looking for food in town – get sent to the holding facility, or “bear jail”, in a former aeroplane hangar that can hold as many as 20 animals. “When they’re inside, they can have water but no food,” says Biddlecombe. “It’s designed to be a negative experience and is remarkably effective. They’re kept for two weeks or more and then relocated by helicopter and marked with green paint so we can track them in case they return.”

“I had no interest in working in the Arctic,” says Biddlecombe. “But I fell in love with it. Every organism fights to exist here. The trees that you see fight hard to survive and you respect them. Many things feel remarkable to witness. Polar bears aren’t friendly. All of the bears that I have met have been immobilised. We find bears by helicopter, immobilise them, collect samples and measurements, and fit them with satellite collars that they wear for two years. Their heads have very soft fur but the rest is coarse and translucent. Males fight a lot. During mating season, weaker males give up and can die. Adult males eat cubs.”

If Biddlecombe is working to protect bear habitats as tourism grows, what will happen when this boom-and-bust town starts to boom again? We meet Chris Avery, the president and CEO of the Arctic Gateway Group, which was formed after the train tracks were washed away by the 2017 floods and Omnitrax, the rail operator at the time, refused to repair them. For 18 months, there was no train. No road connects Churchill to the rest of Manitoba. Fuel, food and other supplies had to be flown or shipped in. Prices skyrocketed. In response, 29 First Nations and 12 northern communities launched the Arctic Gateway Group in 2018 and convinced the federal government to buy back the rail and port. “Think of us like a start-up with a 100-year-old port,” says Avery. “This is Canada’s only Arctic deep-sea port that’s serviced by rail. It already exists. Now, Churchill is strategically more important to drive trade to Europe. The port supports our sovereignty in the north [from US tariffs] and lets us build a legacy. And the town wants stable year-round employment. Tourism alone will not provide the same generational opportunity.”

There are hard limits to attracting visitors. As we found out while getting here, even rail travel can be a gamble. “We don’t use the train for our tours,” says Alex de Vries, the co-owner of Discover Churchill. “Flights are more reliable but expensive. We do 275 package tours a year but could do more. From the summer to autumn, the population swells to 1,500.” According to the Arctic Gateway Group, the next phase for the town will be “led by stewardship”. The port project has the support of Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, its minister of energy and natural resources, Tim Hodgson, and the premier of Manitoba, Wab Kinew – but everyone in Churchill knows the cost of national ambition. Dave Daley, who runs tour company Wapusk Adventures, sits on the board that oversees the Arctic Gateway Project. “We have to weigh any economic benefits with the environmental damage,” he says. “The last time southern Canada got involved up here, 80 per cent of the Churchill River was diverted for hydroelectricity. We lost our river, our fish and our recreation.”

But Churchill is now positioned for growth, not as a military outpost or grain terminal but as an Arctic trade route owned by northern communities. Avery asks the same question that Biddlecombe is asking in the field: what will growth do to the animals that we love? In a place where everyone can tell you about the Arctic hare who lives in town, the future cannot be measured in terms of export tonnage and shipping lanes alone. The question isn’t whether Churchill can grow but whether it can do so without nature becoming an afterthought.

Hamilton takes us to the airport for our flight back to Winnipeg. It feels like a going-away party as almost everyone we have met over the past two days is here, picking up relatives, collecting deliveries or flying out themselves. One of our train companions, photographer Gustavson, was right: Churchill does change you. People here orient themselves by the animals, the weather, the light and the community. The cold doesn’t allow for pretence. It reminds me of the astronauts in Samantha Harvey’s book Orbital. “The Earth is the answer to every question,” she wrote. I didn’t meet a bear but I like to think that I’ll be back.

Karim Shafei likes to tell visitors that he has a short commute. The chairman of Al Ismaelia property investment fund lives within walking distance of his office down a pedestrian alley in central Cairo. Known as Kodak Passage because it was once home to several photographic studios, it leads to the striking Sha’ar Hashamayim Synagogue, which was inaugurated in 1908. On the surrounding streets, several buildings are covered with scaffolding, while others have already been given a facelift. This bustling district, which locals refer to as wust al-balad (“city centre” in Arabic), is undergoing a transformation and Shafei is at its heart. Since Al Ismaelia was founded in 2008, it has bought and renovated dozens of properties here, setting the tone for a revival that is gathering pace. “He’s Mr Downtown,” says one resident of the area.

Cairo, the sprawling home of 23 million people, is a city in flux. In its hinterland rise new satellite cities, including a purpose-built administrative capital and suburbs of residential compounds. Centuries-old cemeteries have been demolished to make way for roads and bridges. On the banks of the Nile, beloved houseboats have been dismantled and public gardens replaced by concrete walkways. All of this has taken place under the tightly controlled rule of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who rose to Egypt’s presidency about a year after leading a military coup in 2013. The changing face of Cairo since then has not been without controversy but the regeneration of its downtown is a particularly sensitive issue because of the place that it has long occupied in the Egyptian imagination.

“Downtown is unique,” says the denim-jacketed Shafei as he takes Monocle on a walking tour of some of Al Ismaelia’s properties. It is mid-morning and the air is filled with a cacophony of car horns. A man cycles past, balancing on his head an enormous tray piled high with freshly baked bread. The core of downtown Cairo’s architectural landscape – where crumbling belle époque façades can be spotted alongside later structures that nod to art deco and modernist influences, as well as neo-everything, from pharaonic to Renaissance and Ottoman – dates back to a modernisation drive launched by 19th-century Egyptian ruler Ismail Pasha. Influenced by Haussmann’s Paris, the resulting avenue-lined quarter became an international social and cultural centre of gravity. Numerous films and novels were set in and around the coffee houses, cinemas, theatres and clubs dotting its elegant boulevards.

Since the mid-20th century, however, the character of Cairo’s downtown has been gradually transformed by revolutions, coups and economic crises. For many years, the district was a melancholic version of its former self: dilapidated, dusty and traffic-clogged. Pollution and grime had degraded its formerly grand apartment buildings, mansions and palaces. In 2008, The American University in Cairo – one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the Middle East – relocated its campus to the suburbs, removing the buzz of student life from the area. Government ministries, company headquarters and banks also migrated to the city’s outskirts. When construction of the recently opened Grand Egyptian Museum began in Giza, it seemed as though the older, salmon-pink neoclassical national museum on Tahrir Square was – like wust al-balad more generally – fading into the past. Today traces of the neighbourhood’s cosmopolitan heyday remain in the names on many of its shopfronts, including Stephenson & Co Chemists, the Anglo-Eastern Pharmacy, the Greek Club, and the Lehnert and Landrock bookshop.

As we cross downtown with Shafei, ducking through alleyways and skipping across rooftops, he explains that though Al Ismaelia’s vision for the area respects its extraordinary heritage, it is not nostalgic. “We want to make this a place where different layers of contemporary Egyptian identity are celebrated – a place where all parts of society feel comfortable,” he says. Nearby, shopfronts featuring mannequins dressed in skimpy lingerie contrast with others selling Islamic headscarves.

Born and raised in the affluent Dokki neighbourhood on the other side of the Nile, Shafei realised downtown’s potential in 2000 after he attended the groundbreaking Nitaq contemporary arts festival, at which exhibitions and performances took place in neglected buildings and other spaces. He points out several Al Ismaelia buildings as we stroll. The former French consulate is now a four-storey co-working space; an old pension known as La Viennoise has become Mazeej Balad, a hotel with a buzzy rooftop bar and restaurant. The famous Cinema Radio complex, meanwhile, has been lushly restored and now hosts cabaret shows. The adjoining passageway features a sleek espresso bar, a Levantine restaurant and a branch of Diwan, a female-founded shop that revolutionised bookselling in Cairo.

In the maze of narrow streets behind Cinema Radio, Al Ismaelia’s assets include two warehouses renovated for events and exhibitions, and a handful of commercial premises, among them retailers selling vintage clothing and the work of regional designers. Here, Shafei wants to prioritise a “Made in Egypt” sensibility. “We’re interested in Egyptian concepts, brands, designers, thinkers and innovators,” he says.

Al Ismaelia is not the only driver of change in downtown Cairo. Recent legal reforms are bringing decades-old rent-controlled tenancies to an end. This is expected to further open up the district’s property market to both domestic and foreign investors, while potentially pushing out some long-term residents. At the 70-metre-high Immobilia Building, which was the tallest skyscraper in the Middle East and Africa when it was completed in 1940, four apartments have been refurbished and turned into high-end serviced rentals.

US-born journalist Patrick Werr is one of wust al-balad’s handful of longstanding expatriate residents. He first moved to Cairo in the late 1970s, returned in 1990 and has lived in downtown since 1999. He bought his handsome residence, which overlooks an ornate, neo-Mamluk-style former government ministry, in 2007; he also owns two other apartments in the district and manages a third. “So many of the buildings here are masterpieces,” he says. Sitting in his high-ceilinged salon furnished with art deco and Islamic antiques sourced from local shops, Werr sees downtown’s revival as positive and key to preserving its architectural splendour, if managed properly.

Commercial rents are also due to rise significantly, deepening fears of a wider gentrification that could uproot generations-old family businesses, ranging from tailors to barbershops. “Gentrification is a big part of the conversation,” says restaurateur Hourig Mekhtigian, who is part of the team behind the reinvention of the historic redbrick Tamara building, an Al Ismaelia property now known as Tamara Haus that features airy showrooms for Egyptian designers. The in-house menu includes a nod to Mekhtigian’s Armenian heritage. She sees the transformation of downtown as an opportunity for a new generation of Egyptians to showcase their creative talents. “It’s exciting in so many ways but the gentrification question shows that it needs to be sensitively done,” she says.

Others worry about potential investors who have little appreciation for the district’s rich architectural heritage and distinctive social mix. It has long been a place where small business owners share space with artisans, mechanics, bankers, creatives and bawabs (Cairo’s ubiquitous doormen) from Upper Egypt. Unlike many of the city’s newer neighbourhoods, you can walk almost everywhere, even though the pavements are often cracked. Some of Cairo’s best-known dive bars are just steps from the Automobile and Touring Club of Egypt, a members-only institution established in 1924.

Huda Lutfi is a longtime resident and one of Egypt’s leading contemporary artists. She lives just a short walk from Al Ismaelia’s Cinema Radio complex and is wary of the kind of investment that disregards her neighbourhood’s social mix. “If the priority is profit, that will raise prices and people will be forced out as a result,” she tells Monocle in her ninth-floor flat, high above the din of the streets below. She mentions the hip restaurants that have sprung up nearby, considering them incongruous with the long-established metal workshops, shisha bars and traditional coffee stands. “The fabric of this place, the soul of downtown, is changing,” she says. “I’m concerned that we will be left with just another shopping area.”

Filmmaker Lamia Gouda has channelled her passion for wust al-balad into Baladina, a company that offers walking tours exploring its multilayered past. When Monocle meets her at the storied Café Riche, where portraits of Egyptian literary and cinematic stars who once made up its clientele hang on the walls, she shares her conflicted views on what she describes as the “coolification” of downtown. “I dream of a Cairo that’s more than just a polished façade,” she says. “I want a place that remains a living organism. The restoration of our heritage should not come at the cost of the artists and thinkers who have always been its heartbeat.”

A few streets away on Abdel Khalek Tharwat, a busy thoroughfare known for its booksellers, scooters swerve in and out of traffic as Chris Mikaelian takes another order in his crowded premises. His Egyptian-Armenian family has run Reader’s Corner since 1950; it started as a bookshop before becoming one of the city’s most popular picture framers. He has seen this piece of Cairo evolve over decades and remembers a time when it seemed that the area was being abandoned. “People were moving to other places and business was slowing,” he says, between greeting customers. “We saw a generation emerge that didn’t frequent this part of the city. They didn’t know anything about it. That’s changing now and I think it’s a good thing. I love seeing people – whether young Egyptians or foreigners – discovering downtown and appreciating it again.”

Among the newcomers is a younger cohort of Egyptian designers who see wust al-balad as an inspiring district where past and present collide. Close to the Cinema Radio complex, Ramzi Makram-Ebeid points out one of two locations where he is designing shops for Egyptian menswear brands. Every Cairo resident he knows has a formative memory of downtown and all have a different opinion on its transformation. “Some people are understandably critical or concerned about the direction of change, and those conversations are important for responsible urban evolution,” he says. “That said, in my view, it would be a far greater risk to allow these historic structures to deteriorate beyond repair. Once they are lost, they are gone forever.”

Downtown can be a cipher for different types of nostalgia. When director and curator Adham Hafez, who was part of the pioneering downtown art scene of the late 1990s and 2000s, walks around its grid of streets, he summons vivid memories of that era. He also notes addresses connected to long-gone shops that were owned by his great-grandparents. Hafez has lots of ideas on how to maintain the diversity that several new champions of wust al-balad, including Al Ismaelia, say that they want to protect. These include rent caps and a fund that supports local artisans, craftspeople and small business owners so that they can flourish amid the changes. “I would like to see a thriving and truly alive neighbourhood again,” he says.

Back at his office, decorated with old black-and-white photographs of downtown, Shafei says that Al Ismaelia is commissioning an impact study that he hopes will address some of the concerns. “We don’t want to lose the diversity that exists in downtown. I want to see it continue as a place where people from all walks of life can gather.” He adds that wust al-balad has a singular character shaped over many decades that is resilient enough to survive changes in the law or the arrival of companies such as his.

“Downtown has a life of its own and we’re conscious of that,” he says. The push and pull over the future of the area is rooted in Cairo’s history but it also has echoes of similar debates elsewhere. It’s understandable that some people fear that certain aspects of its ongoing transformation risk undermining what made this corner of the Egyptian capital so special to begin with. A balance between continuity and change must be found.

A short walk from Al Ismaelia’s headquarters, El Araby El Araby is carving fat slices of beef behind the counter at Boucherie El Araby, a business that has been in his family for generations. The original signage in Arabic and French gold lettering, and the curved, zinc-and-mahogany cash desk hark back to very different times. A plaque outside declares that Othman Abaza, a prominent mid-century Egyptian actor and director, once lived in the building. “Downtown is indeed changing in many ways,” acknowledges El Araby as he lines up a gleaming joint and slams down his sharp blade. “But some things never change.”

After almost 20 years of the Lei Cidade Limpa (Clean City Law), which heavily regulates outdoor advertising, São Paulo is poised to backslide to its old ways. The (perhaps ironically named) Commission to Protect the Urban Landscape has approved the Boulevard São João project – a plan to cover four buildings at the intersection of Avenidas São João and Ipiranga with LED panels, in the manner of New York’s Times Square.

The prospect of garish ads among the city’s historic buildings makes me anxious. When São Paulo introduced the Lei Cidade Limpa in 2007, our relationship with our surroundings changed almost overnight. More tasteful, subtler spots were found for ads (on newsstands, for example) and we started to notice the architecture around us. Colourful murals popped up on tower blocks and we discovered major talents such as street artists Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, better known as Osgemeos. From Buenos Aires to Seoul, other cities took note. Over the years, polls have shown that the majority of São Paulo’s residents approve of the law.

If the new plans go ahead, São Paulo’s buildings will once again be reduced to a canvas for ad campaigns, bombarding pedestrians with slogans – hardly conducive to a high quality of life. When advertising is allowed to overshadow a city’s essence and character, the results are invariably ugly and confusing. The Boulevard São João project is a hard sell. For the sake of his city, São Paulo’s mayor, Ricardo Nunes, should turn out its lights.

Read next:
‘If you have the privilege, this is a way to survive.’ How two 1950s towers built community in São Paulo

Why Casa Santa Luzia is São Paulo’s most beloved supermarket