It’s one of those exceptionally glorious Saturday mornings along the shores of Lake Zürich that fills you with happy thoughts, optimism and plenty of ideas that require short- to midterm action. You likely have your own version of snow-capped Alpine peaks framed by an endless sunny sky, gardens of coral peonies, joggers and octogenarians who all say good morning (actually “Morge mitenand”), happy mallards doing duck stuff and the fresh smells of the lake, cut grass and jasmine. On days like this there are various morning circuits that mix meadow, forest, shoreline and the village. There might be a coffee stop, perhaps a meeting, a spin around the grocery store and, in today’s case, a very long lunch at the Badi (local bathing club) and some towel time on the lawn with the weekend papers.

As we set to work on our July/August quality-of-life issue, I find myself asking what it takes to create a functioning community where small businesses thrive, people smile and the mood is bubbly and buoyant? On my way back from the village centre, I walk past people cleaning their cars, trimming back ivy, pushing prams or hustling to the train station, and I am left wondering if any institutions have come up with a formula that accounts for scent and public safety, perfect pavements and polite salutations?

For nearly two decades, we’ve been working on metrics that measure some of these essential elements of a pleasant life, which in big global cities become diluted as the focus shifts to airport connectivity, bigger security issues and the quality of medical care. Do you ever ponder what gives you an added spring in your step when you walk, cycle or drive to the shops? When you venture out for your evening run? Or do you have a shortlist of what could elevate your mood or what living in another neighbourhood might feel like? If you do, I’m most keen to hear as we’re setting to work on a little idea for the forthcoming issue. As ever, you can drop me a note at tb@monocle.com. In the meantime, here are a few life improvement starters from a morning stride around my patch.

1.   
It really does take a village. Whether it’s 1,500 people in a stand-alone stretch of wilderness or an urban village of 25,000 in an Asian megacity, you need a collection of shops, services, sole operators and F&B purveyors to allow people to gather from early till late. And no, it doesn’t need to be all cobble lanes and stripy awnings, a well-managed and designed community mall can also do the trick.

2.   
A thrice-weekly market creates a sense of occasion and a reason for people to break with routines while bringing in some different produce and points of interaction.

3.   
A kiosk with good print is more necessary than ever. If there can be a jolt of coffee on the side, then yes please. Sadly our daily printed newspaper habits are evaporating but there’s still room for bountiful weekend reads – we just need places to buy such titles.

4.   
Flowers, branches and neatly trimmed trees in abundance. Every village must have a seven-day-a-week flower shop for greenery and blossoms for all occasions.

5.   
Recognition is important. Knowing your wine merchant is helpful not only when planning a dinner party but it also helps if you need to leave your keys for a visiting relative to pick up. It also means that they’ll know where to go when they need to leave that “thank you bottle” for their stay.

6.   
A place to stretch out, plunge and do very little. Be it a pool, some grass beside a bathing pond or a rocky beach beside the marina, life is better when you can be surrounded by well-mannered locals (visitors too) who know the codes and want little more than sun, a cold beer or rosé from a small bar and a few seats for lingering into the evening.

7.   
An attentive mayor and team with their eyes on the details. For example, some arseholes sprayed nonsense tags in the passage under the rail tracks and I was happy to see that within a few days it had been removed and all looked as good as new.

8.   
Good pavements that leave space for walkers, bikes and also cars. Villages don’t need to be for pedestrians only. I am a firm believer that passing traffic, wheeled and otherwise, keeps a community interesting.

9.   
Warm, golden, dimmed street lamps. Cold LEDs are a mood killer for all – insects and birds included.

10.
Finally, a good bookshop for readings, signings, stimulation and gift-buying. Independent is great but a good chain can often be just as good. Be content to embrace anyone prepared to sell fine print.

Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns.

What does a hotel do all day? Check in, check out, rinse and repeat – perhaps you’ve heard it all before? But the best hospitality brands are islands of perfection where the professionalism of the staff allows guests to forget their cares. The Rosewood is one such enclave of excellence. Occupying 43 floors of Kowloon’s 65-storey Rosewood Tower, the property is almost an autonomous, luxurious city-state in itself. But it’s best used as the starting point of an adventure in the real city outside. From breakfast and lunch to cocktails and jazz, via a celebration of the backstage business that ensures such outward-facing smooth sailing, here’s a day in the life of the Rosewood Hong Kong.

08.00: Breakfast
Good morning. Now, ask yourself: is there such a thing as an average day? While you’re mulling that over, on an “average” day, the Rosewood’s early-rising cooks will prepare some 380 breakfasts, from a full English to an American waffle fest (there’s a lean, clean “wellness” menu too, featuring the horror that is an egg-white omelette). The best and most popular – go on, make like a local – is the Hong Kong breakfast of congee, siu mai steamed dumplings, some teeth-squeakingly refreshing radishes and Hong Kong-style milk tea.

09.00: Concierge
Concierges are a hotel’s brains trust. They will certainly net you some local knowledge and might help you out of a sticky situation too. Micky Siu is the head concierge here and he swears by “special service, going the extra mile”. His pastoral care extends to whipping together a full itinerary for a guest wishing to explore the city and making the necessary arrangements for a big shot who has forgotten that he needs a helicopter to Macao in 15 minutes. “We sometimes have to run to Hermès and buy a bag as a gift,” says Micky, “but it has to look as though it was chosen by the guest, of course.” Micky’s outreach also extends to oiling the wheels of a galaxy of contacts. The maîtres d’ of Hong Kong’s most in-demand restaurants are kept sweet with an annual dinner, maybe two, just to be safe. “There might be a four-month waiting list for some places,” says Micky, “but we can get you in.”

10.00: A city tour
Lotus Leung is the Rosewood’s cultural ambassador and guide to, well, almost whatever you wish. “Lotus,” I say, “I’d like to capture the diversity of Hong Kong in phenomenal photographs!” And off we go in a plush Toyota Alphard. It’s a sunny spring day, warm enough to encourage the blooms and blossoms at the Mong Kok flower market to open and smile. We see squat kumquat trees, lilies, peonies, amaryllis, delicate orchids, shy bonsai, anthurium, gardenias and wild roses tamed for terraces. The Ming Heung Tea Company isn’t far away. It’s old school and the tea is transported in actual crates. The leaves are weighed, bagged, wrapped and dispatched with a smile. In the poetically named Kowloon City Municipal Services Building sits an unsung hero of all-day dining. The Lok Yuen Coffee Stall is a classic cha chaan teng and it’s all beef noodles, egg-drop soups, milk tea and strip lighting. Lotus says that she wouldn’t normally entertain guests at a simple place like this but miss it at your peril: it’s a rare example of a specific kind of cheap-and-cheerful Hong Kong perfection.

12.00: The driveway
Elegant Roman stones pave the way from street level to the Rosewood’s entrance. There’s something of a southern European sound to the satisfying rumble of wheels on cobbles as new guests arrive and those departing are wished farewell.

12.15: Check-in
New guests will find no pulling and pushing of door handles at the Rosewood, thank you very much. Instead, you have a stylish arm outstretched, a smile, a nod that’s a close cousin to a bow and a “Good afternoon”. First impressions? So important.

13.00: Lunch
While you’re enjoying your barbecue pork rice, crispy bean-curd rolls, Hainanese chicken rice or yeung chow fried rice at the Canto-Western wonder that is Holt’s Café, the Rosewood’s staff are lunching backstage in shifts. The 978 “associates” will form an orderly queue, take a tray and enjoy Alfie’s chops, chilli, chow mein, hot-and-sour soup, sandwiches and stir fries. Alfie is a Rosewood legend – a status bolstered by his exceptional charm and the fact that he commutes to work on a Harley-Davidson.

15.00: Your quarters
Swoon at your room, which is likely gorgeous. Of 413 keys, 91 are suites. Dressing rooms open into walk-through bathrooms; sofas and armchairs are scattered with wild abandon in some of the largest rooms in the city. You might get lost on the way from your bed to the wardrobe. In many rooms, big windows frame a bigger view of the bustling ferries and junks of Kowloon puttering across the bay and the green hills and hazy towers of Hong Kong Island. The best booking in the Rosewood? That’ll be the Harbour House, which consists of five bedrooms, a private pool, a gym and a terrace. A huge space at 931 sq m, it occupies the entirety of the 57th floor of the Rosewood Tower. Just a thought for your next weekend break.

16.30: Landings and lifts
As a material, rosewood is dark, durable and can be polished to a high sheen. Those characteristics are drawn out by the low light, soft carpet and cosy landings of many of the guest floors. Shelves and consoles are stocked with books on art and music, next to ceramics, paperweights and objets d’art. The 38 guest lifts will noiselessly deliver you to your heart’s desire. The Asaya spa? A restaurant for a bite? Gym, yoga, some shopping at the Beauregards store? Sure. Or stroll through these stunning spaces and I-spy all of the artworks, from Damien Hirst’s butterflies to Wang Keping’s curious birds.

17.00: Laundry and outfitting
Wendy is the boss of the Rosewood’s Double Happiness Laundry. She is the below-stairs doyenne of keeping guests and staff looking clean, tidy, sharp and crease-free. Many staff garments are cleaned daily and a nimble-fingered alterations service ensures that every uniform is adjusted to fit. The proof is in the martial smartness of the staff. The hotel makes use of more than 100 different uniforms – an array that encompasses butlers to personal trainers, barmen to chauffeurs. At the Rosewood, the cut of a waistcoat can denote rank as plainly as the stripes on the cuff of an admiral.

19.00: Staff meeting
The calm intent of a pre-service pow-wow at Chaat, the Rosewood’s Michelin-starred Indian restaurant, is a sight to behold. There are almost 500 staff working in the hotel’s F&B operations and meetings such as these are the emollient in that well-oiled machine.

20.00: Room-service elevator
The Rosewood’s room-service menu is 40 pages long, a mouthwatering novella. About 100 meals are sent to rooms each day; the 12 service lifts are almost always busy delivering sweet-and-sour pork, jasmine rice and bottles of Tsingtao beer.

23.00: Jazz club
Though weekday last orders don’t exactly align with the dirty stop-out’s charter – at a mere 23.45 – the vibe at the Rosewood’s DarkSide bar is all speakeasy: a loungey atmosphere with the sort of low lighting that makes every glance alluring. Live jazz offers supper-club ambience and the cocktails keep coming. The martini is an icy shard of clean steel; the Rob Roy all smooth power but jaunty with its drunken cherry; the old fashioned a robust answer to last orders. The DarkSide really sings.

The Chelsea Flower Show has been taking place in London this week. It concludes today. I like gardens and plants, and can be persuaded to have a glass of rosé at lunchtime, so when a friend organised for a team of us to attend this famous gardening extravaganza to mark his milestone birthday, I was delighted to join. And I loved it. Well, with one wrinkle.

Now, for any of you who don’t know your daisies from your derrieres, or have somehow avoided this very British event, a small explanation. The Chelsea Flower Show, organised by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), opens with a party attended by the royals – the king and queen both rocked up – and a lot of TV celebrities who are definitely in the daisies-from-derrieres camp.

The first two days are exclusively for RHS members and their guests (that was me), then anyone can go. And they do: thousands come from the shires for a day out to see new plant varieties, perhaps order a pergola for their country house or snap up a giant 18th-century stone trough about the size of a London apartment. People dress up. You can wear a hat.

Much of the press coverage is lavished on the show-garden competition, where leading designers, in partnership with a flush sponsor, create innovative creations that perhaps reflect on climate change or mental health. But this is the wrinkle – you can barely see them.

Each tiny patch is roped off with crowds of nice elderly people – often in granny-scrums four or five deep – craning to get a view. It’s the gardening equivalent of a mosh pit – a mulch pit? Sponsors, of course, have access to their miniature garden but risk ending up looking like exhibits in a zoo. “Look, is that a lesser-spotted chairman behind that pine tree?”

But the real reason they seem to be fenced off is to give all-day access to the BBC camera crews (there’s a show from the event every day). And it’s then that you realise that these are not gardens, they’re TV sets. Each one needs a place for the crew to stand, easy sightlines for the cameras. A gardening presenter, waiting to be given their cue, stares at a bloom as though it were a love interest.

Meanwhile, I watched the carer of a young man in a wheelchair just give up trying to get a view of the vegetation. A woman wiped tears from her face as she tried to take in the Parkinson’s UK garden – she had just lost her husband to the illness. It’s a shame that these people can’t be more front and centre. But you can escape this part and then the real fun begins.

At the heart of the show is the Great Pavilion, a vast marquee filled with exhibitors showcasing their particular obsessions – bonsais, hostas, roses, water lilies. It’s part village fête, part Victorian showground. It’s colourful, even a little brash in places, and truly glorious.

Meeting people who have dedicated their lives to perfecting one thing, to becoming the go-to person for a particular plant, is wonderful. I soon find myself eyeing up a display of water irises even though I have no pond and they would have to take over the bathtub. Perhaps I need that trough.

You could spend all day here because passion is a very compelling thing to be around. You can even get a glimpse of the new Sir David Beckham rose – a flushed, pink-faced little number. The rose that is, though I was a little taken aback by its flawless petals. Surely modern horticulture could manage a few blue tattoos by now.

To read more from Andrew Tuck, click here.

There was high drama and heavy symbolism on Wednesday when the US indicted Cuba’s elderly former president Raúl Castro. The charges – for the alleged downing of two small civilian planes by Cuban military jets in 1996 – were announced on Cuba’s Independence Day (20 May) in the grand hall of Miami’s Freedom Tower, which has served for decades as the first port-of-call for migrants who escaped Cuba for the US.

But in practice, it isn’t entirely clear how the indictment moves the Trump administration any closer to its goal of toppling an old and outsized adversary once and for all. Meanwhile, the US’s crippling fuel blockade against the island has been in effect since January. 

“Indicting Raúl Castro suggests that he’s actually still in charge, even though he’s retired,” says Mark Manger, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. “So it might be a move [that turns out] to be pointless.”

Castro, soon to turn 95, stepped back from public life in 2019 and was replaced as president by Miguel Díaz-Canel, a long-serving insider of Cuba’s Communist Party. He is the first person from outside the Castro family to lead Cuba since the socialist revolution in 1959. In April, Trump demanded Díaz-Canel’s resignation in return for an easing of US sanctions.

Díaz-Canel is what, in the Soviet Union, people called an apparatchik. “He is not a powerful figure,” says Manger. “He does not have a power base. He has been put there largely because he is somebody who other more important forces in the Cuban government can control. Removing him [from office] and replacing him would change absolutely nothing. [The US] had to be disabused of its perception [of Díaz-Canel’s influence] by Marco Rubio himself. Whereas [Venezuela’s] Nicolás Maduro was at least bestowed with a sort of authority as the successor to Hugo Chávez, Díaz-Canel commands no respect whatsoever – not in the population, not in the other parts of the regime.”

It’s a fact that I learnt firsthand in 2024. When I arrived in the town of Viñales in northern Cuba, my host told me that I’d “missed the big show today”. Viñales, he explained, had earlier been visited by Díaz-Canel. Buildings in the central square had been freshly painted, cheerful schoolchildren withdrawn from their classrooms and convened to greet the de facto leader. Even a herd of cattle was assembled from across the region for the president to inspect. But it was all an illusion, dutifully constructed for the afternoon. At the end of the day’s pleasantries, Díaz-Canel’s departing helicopter was still visible in the sky when the electricity was switched off, returning the community to the routine of rolling hours-long blackouts.

So as Cuba’s civilian population grapples with the worst living conditions on the island since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, who is in charge? Seasoned observers point to Castro’s chief bodyguard and elusive grandson, who is known by his nickname, Raúlito. “We do know that Marco Rubio has talked to him directly,” says Manger. “But all of this comes down to the fundamental problem that a government in an authoritarian country will only change if the people who benefit from the [status quo] lose their grip.”

The military leadership, of which Raúlito is part, has enjoyed a relatively comfortable life in Cuba. Billions of dollars flowed in from the tourism industry, which is run by the military-controlled mega-conglomerate, Gaesa. There are videos of Raúlito partying on a yacht and photos circulating of particularly handsome luxury cars. “Even when the Cuban population is starving, the people in the military – the officer class and above – are doing fine,” says Manger. 

In indicting Castro, the Trump administration has made its most provocative move yet against a state that has loomed large in the US imagination for decades. It’s a powerful statement for Cuban-Americans in southern Florida and beyond, who have long abhorred attempts to normalise relations with Cuba’s government, even if those moves, such as the détente put in place by then-president Barack Obama in 2016, lifted many out of poverty.

What the indictment doesn’t do, however, is give a clear signal of what happens next or what a recast Cuba might look like. Civilians still find themselves stuck in a gruelling and increasingly intolerable waiting game as the powers that be fight out their future for them. Who is in charge? For now, Cubans remain in the dark. 

Tomos Lewis is a regular Monocle contributor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Look, I get it. You don’t have time to read this. You’ve been at the time-management apps again and they are clear: you must not waste a moment. “Don’t let your precious time slip away,” demands one app-review website (we don’t even have time to research our own time-management apps, it seems).Come on, you need to fill every second. Be efficient and productive. Maximise life. Nothing to do this weekend? No time for slackers. Fill up those calendar slots and get busy! Is it lunchtime yet? Check in with Google.

The tragedy is that this rush is nothing new. In the year 263BC, Rome got its first public sundial and, according to playwright Plautus, its residents hated it. “Confound him who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack my days so wretchedly into small pieces! I can’t fall to unless the sun gives leave.” But you can bet that if the Romans had our technology, the streets around the Forum might have been filled with the urgent pings and buzzes of calendar notifications: a Times Square for ancient times.

Spin the hands of the clock forward to the year 507AD, in the city of Verona. No longer part of the Roman Empire, it was then ruled by the Ostrogoth king Theodoric, who ordered the construction of a huge acoustic water clock that not only displayed the time but also shouted it across the streets and squares of the city in “strange voices obtained by the violent springing up of waters from beneath”. The king himself explained that the clock was there to help the people of Verona “distinguish the various hours of the day and thus decide how best to occupy every moment”. The Goths, or their efficiency-seeking leaders at least, would have been very much at home with the notion of time management.

The idea that time was something we could waste – rather than spend as we please – took off when the English Puritans began thumping the pulpit. Time, they insisted, always in stern voices, was not yours to waste.

The 17th-century Puritan preacher Richard Baxter claimed that idleness was a great sin, for by wasting time “you are guilty of robbing God himself”. Steady on. Pocket watches were then starting to trickle down through society; a new style was known as the “Puritan” watch. Undecorated, austere. A reminder of the sin of idleness every time you produced it from your waistcoat pocket. Time started ticking a little faster. The first watch acquired for the British Museum was a Puritan watch, made in about 1635 and alleged to have belonged to the puritan’s puritan himself, Oliver Cromwell.

A century later, the industrial revolution began its all-conquering march towards greater productivity. Here too, under capitalism, we poor mortals were shaped by insistent messages of temporal efficiency. It was the American founding father and polymath Benjamin Franklin who, in a 1748 treatise, told the world to “remember that time is money”. Sitting idle? You’re throwing away your own cash, you loser.

We’ve been imbibing this stuff for centuries. Today’s timekeeping tech can hack our days into fragments so small that it’s hard to conceive of them as real moments. Atomic clocks, which use the fundamental properties of atoms to keep time, have been with us since the 1950s. The latest ones keep time on a femtosecond scale: quadrillionths of a second. If one of these had been set running at the Big Bang – the birth of the universe and everything in it, including time itself – it would be wrong today by less than half a second. Atomic clocks now set the beat for the modern world.

When Rome woke up to its first public sundials, some 2,300 years ago, one writer called for the columns on which they were mounted to be torn down. Now I’m not saying we stop the clocks but it’s a thought, isn’t it?

Do we need to submit so fatalistically to the drumbeat of time or the cacophony of smartphone calendar notifications? In some sense, isn’t it like having an angry little Richard Baxter at his Puritan pulpit in our pocket, preaching against idleness 24 hours a day. Or a tiny Ostrogoth water clock pouring scorn on us to make more plans. Do we really need that in our lives? Perhaps we could just choose to sit still for a while every now and then, and, you know, think. Off the clock, of course.

Ultimately it’s up to us whether we cram “leisure” time with activities and tasks rather than stopping to raise our heads, breathe deeply and consider the happy fact of our time-limited lives. It’s your call – my time here is up and I’ve got other things to be getting on with.

New York City Design Week wraps up today. The event, which is headlined by the ICFF trade fair and spans all five boroughs, is one of the most significant gatherings for the US furniture, interiors and design community. It’s an internationally important event too – the US leads the global furniture market in terms of revenue generation, which is forecast to be a healthy $265bn (€228bn) in 2026. Despite this number, the country is often seen to be behind European powerhouses such as Italy and Denmark when it comes to contemporary creativity; many US-based designers descend on the likes of Milan and Copenhagen for their respective design weeks and not vice versa. Turning the tide might require American creatives to better articulate new and innovative ways forward in the industry. Here are some insights that I have gleaned from New York, which might just entice the international crowd to pay the country a visit.

Strength in numbers
Nidhi Kapur is the founder of New York-based furniture brand Maiden Home. “American homes got bigger and American furniture got bigger but American design got lost along the way,” she said when I visited her showroom in the city’s Meatpacking District to see her newest release: a handsome credenza and wardrobe. “In the 1990s, we traded our workshops for warehouses. American furniture became about scale, speed and cost.” So, how to find that confidence again? For Kapur, it’s not about leaning into a particular style but embracing the expertise of the material and maker, with form following from there. 

Build on a legacy
The US has, historically, been the launchpad for a host of globally important design groups, including the West Coast Studio Craft movement. Led by Californian makers such as Sam Maloof and John Nyquist in the 1950s and 1960s, it rejected mass production in favour of handmade, experimental designs. It provides a ripe foundation for contemporary creatives to build on – and that’s exactly what Stockton-based Jared Rusten is doing. His work was on show at ICFF and is a natural evolution of the likes of Maloof. “I like to think that the work I’m making is a bit of a continuation of the style and values of those woodworkers,” said Rusten. “Clean, Scandinavian- and Japanese-inspired but with a bit of Californian influence.”

Start a new one
While there are legacies to build on, there are also opportunities to establish new ones rooted in distinctly American materiality. Just ask Ryan Twardzik of Unform Studio, who has coined his own design ethos: Pennsylvania Modern. “I want to harness the craft, materials and regionality of Pennsylvania to make forward-looking pieces of design,” said Twardzik from the floor of ICFF. “It combines traditional techniques with new forms that speak to those who make furniture here but can be offered to a global audience that wants something beautiful, well-made and considered.”

Reinvent the wheel
Sometimes it pays to do something different. That’s exactly what Joey Aji, winner of ICFF’s Emerging Designers Spotlight, has done with his winning works. The New York-based designer used marble dust, combined with non-toxic resin binders, to produce furniture with the look and feel of a solid block of stone without the associated weight. An ingenious approach to manufacturing.

Emotion, not style
Astraeus Clarke is a homeware and lighting brand. Their approach is not influenced by a particular aesthetic but rather an ability to evoke feelings. “When we design we aren’t trying to make something in a ‘style’ or are even focused on using a particular material – those things come but are usually secondary,” says co-founder Jacob Starley. “The most important thing is that someone sees our work and it evokes a memory or sensation. If the goal of the space was to feel sexy and someone comes in and says that it is, that’s a success as far as I’m concerned. It can be that simple.”

Nic Monisse is Monocle’s design editor. For more from ICFF, tune in to Monocle Radio.

During a live televised debate last June in the run-up to New York’s mayoral election, the nine candidates who were vying for the Democratic party’s nomination were asked where each would hypothetically travel for their first official overseas visit in office. The candidates dotted from destination to destination: Israel, Colombia, Ukraine, Jamaica, Canada. Apart from Zohran Mamdani, who turned his gaze homeward. “I would stay in New York City,” he said, in what became a memorable exchange. “My plans are to address New Yorkers across the five boroughs – and focus on that.”

Almost six months into his mayoralty, Mamdani has been true to his word. His role so far has been painted in big, broad rhetorical brushstrokes by left and right, supporters and cynics – the former styling him as a grand socialist urban saviour; the latter as the author of a great city’s undoing. But he has placed his focus on something altogether more tangible than either of those caricatures allow: the nuts and bolts of city life.

Mamdani has been keen to demonstrate that he is working – in a visible way – to achieve something that many assumed would elude him once he came to power: getting things done. That has included decluttering public thoroughfares by limiting the amount of time that scaffolding can remain up around a construction site; converting on-street car-parking spaces into areas for large new rubbish receptacles; personally guiding New Yorkers through their preparations for a snowstorm; and visiting subway-maintenance workers underground during a midnight shift.

“A mayoralty is a unique – and uniquely difficult – institution in politics,” says Brian Kelcey, an author, mayoral advisor and commentator on urban affairs based at Winnipeg city hall in Canada. “It’s a role that is highly visible, so people have high expectations of their mayors. But one of the things that has been most catastrophic to public trust in governments has been that many cities have simply been ineffective at making change. It just takes too long to do reasonable things. And that has created a lot of scepticism.” Small, key milestones are critical. Being able to say “we saved $1,000 here” or “we fixed this pavement that hasn’t been fixed in 20 years” builds trust.

By fixating on repairing or transforming the smaller, more tangible aspects of city life, Kelcey says, the way is paved for bigger transformations to come – in Mamdani’s case, for example, city-owned grocery stores or free public-bus journeys. “The momentum that you build by doing that buys you political capital to go back to your state or federal government and say, ‘We’re good partners.’”

Mayors operate in proximity to their constituents in a way that the holders of other high political offices rarely do. But this also means that mayors are often held to account more quickly and acutely for things that occur on their watch. Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass, who is currently involved in an uphill re-election campaign, has struggled to recover her standing since being absent from the city when wildfires arrived in the Palisades in early 2025 – or her on-the-ground mishandling of their aftermath. (She was on an official visit in Ghana when the fires broke out.) Similarly, Pete Buttigieg’s controversial demotion of South Bend’s first black police chief while he was mayor of the Indiana city could still curtail his presidential ambitions among black voters, in 2028 or beyond. 

Mamdani has also learned this recently – a public backlash to a proposal to cut spending on New York’s public libraries spurred a rapid response. Baseline library funding in New York of $37.1m (€32m) will now be protected by law, in effect, forever. 

All of this is something of which leaders perched higher up the electoral ladder would be wise to note. Realising bigger ambitions is often most successful when they are anchored in the smaller achievements that precede them. It’s from there that the bigger picture begins to paint itself.

Further reading:
After 100 days of Zohran Mamdani’s New York, is the first-time mayor living up to the hype?

Is there an antidote to loneliness in our cities? If you ask the Danes, the answer could be co-housing: a community‑led way of living that can improve quality of life while also making urban life more affordable. The concept places single-family homes around shared common areas, giving residents central places to gather, garden and play. With more opportunities to build neighbourly connections, co-housing has been shown to decrease feelings of loneliness in older residents, as well as help young families offset childcare.

Co-housing schemes have begun gaining traction in the UK, with 30-plus projects already established in the country and more than 60 currently in development. Development company Town is spearheading housing builds across the UK and currently has five communities in the works. Monocle spoke to Jonny Anstead, one of the business’s founding directors, about how Town works and how co-housing can improve the quality of life for people from all generations and walks of life. 

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. Listen to the full version of this interview on The Urbanist.

What is co-housing?
Co-housing is a very simple idea: it’s a community where you know your neighbours. It’s a bit like an old village, where you are familiar with the people living around you. You can rely on them to help you with problems that we all face in life. The basic idea being that people have their own home but, in addition, they have shared spaces, such as a common house where they can cook and eat together, as well as some shared outdoor areas for gardening, children’s play and other uses.

Is that different from what some people might describe as a co-operative? 
The idea of [co-housing is around] co-operative behaviours, living among other people and drawing on one another for support. Co-operative [housing] can mean something a little more specific, in terms of the financial model of a community where things are owned jointly. In the case of co-housing, the usual model is that homes are owned privately but in addition to those private homes, there’s a level of community ownership of these shared spaces.

Let’s talk about Town, which you co-founded in 2014. Tell us about that journey and why you decided to set it up.
We set up Town because we saw shortcomings in the way that housing is planned, designed and built. There’s a mismatch between the quality of housing that is delivered in the UK and the way that people want to live. Housing reflects some of the problems that we have as a society: people are lonely and feel isolated. For children growing up in the kind of housing that we create, there’s a real shortcoming in their quality of life. Some 100 years ago, children had opportunities to play outside, to explore the world independently of their grown ups. These days, [it’s more likely] that they will be inside [looking at] screens and the outside world is something to be feared rather than explored. We saw an opportunity to create a form of housing that would [challenge] some of those ideas.

On ‘The Urbanist’ we talk a lot about the importance of people-centric design and designing places that are at scale – but that’s often difficult to deliver. You seem to have found a way to bring things down to a much more relatable sense of living, both socially and in the built environment.
[Our] model of co-housing is built around scale, which makes some of those things easier. Co-housing is typically between 20 and 45 homes. At that scale, you can achieve a lot of things but first and foremost you can know your neighbours. The modern co-housing movement, which originated in Denmark, talks about social maths of design – the idea being that at these scales, you can share spaces, assets and resources because you have that familiarity with the people around you.

Let’s now dive into some of the projects of these co-housing communities that you have worked on. What are some that come to mind and what do you particularly like about each of them?
There is one completed scheme that Town delivered directly. [It’s] called Marmalade Lane and it’s a 42-home project in Orchard Park near Cambridge that was completed in 2020. It is made up of about 100 people. It’s an intergenerational co-housing community that has a diverse mix of individuals, from people who live on their own to families with young children and so on. Residents can actually benefit from having different kinds of people around them. For instance, at Marmalade Lane, adults who have little ones report that it’s nice having other adults around who can take on some of the burdens of childcare.

You mentioned that this is an intergenerational community. Tell us more about how helping older people feel like they’re part of a community enhances their quality of life.
We’re all living longer. We’re all ageing. The question of how we grow older in a way that is dignified, while maintaining quality of life and addressing the risks of isolation, which become greater as you grow older, is critical. [This is] not just within co-housing but as a society. Co-housing is a valuable model because it means that as you become older and as your needs change, you have people around you who can address some of your day-to-day needs. They’re not carers in an official sense but what they will be able to do is look out for each other. If someone is unwell, [the community] will be able to support them. They can spot if somebody hasn’t been around very much and address isolation before it becomes a real issue.

How involved are the residents in planning their own community?
A lot of co-housing communities have come from people getting together, looking for a site and working together on bringing [the community] forward. Our model consists of a few different ways of doing it. In some cases, we work with groups that already exist [and] we act as a developer. We help them plan their community. We appoint a design team and we have design sessions [where we collaborate with the future residents]. We collectively set the brief and then set the design for the community.

Listen to the full version of this interview on The Urbanist.

It’s a sign of the times that no major international cultural event seems to be complete any more without an accompanying culture war. At the Venice Biennale, conflict has arisen over Russia’s return to the event. The current hotbed of discontent? The south of France, where the Cannes Film Festival is taking place.
 
While many have been talking about Garance and the 12-minute standing ovation that it received over the weekend, the headlines are being hogged by another story that has nothing to do with who is wearing what on the Croisette or which film will snag the Palme d’Or. Instead, the talk is about billionaire industrialist and media tycoon Vincent Bolloré. To the left, he’s a pantomime villain who associates with the far right and is leading France down a retrograde path. Bolloré prefers to call himself a “Christian democrat”, interested in media as a business opportunity rather than for ideological reasons.

On 11 May, a day before the festival opened, more than 600 French industry figures signed an open letter condemning the sweeping “Bollorisation” of film and media, citing a potential “fascist takeover of the collective imagination”. Bolloré’s investments are large, spanning Vivendi (where he is a majority stockholder) and his own holding, Bolloré Group. His portfolio includes Canal+ and Studio Canal – the premier private financier of French cinema – as well as rabble-rousing news channel CNews, Europe 1 radio, Sunday weekly Le Journal du Dimanche and publishing behemoth Hachette. 

Backlash to the open letter came on Sunday, when Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada said that he would no longer work with anyone who signed it. Many signatories were reportedly troubled by Canal+’s acquisition of a 34 per cent stake in UGC last year, which operates one of France’s main cinema chains. Bolloré and his clan are accused of tightening their grip on both the production and the distribution of film in the country.

Yet evidence of an ideological takeover in French film is scant, even if it feels as though someone is taking a wrecking ball to the industry. But there are concerns that this could change if the far right wins big in France’s next legislative elections. Just yesterday, CNews commentator Pascal Praud was telling people to watch L’Abandon, which premiered on 13 May, about a controversial drama about a teacher murdered by an Islamist.

Fears over Bolloré’s level of creative control are also based on the current turmoil at Grasset, a Hachette imprint that has long been seen as a bastion of France’s intellectual spirit for its championing of major historical and contemporary thinkers. Some commentators and writers have reportedly linked the ousting of long-term CEO Olivier Nora last month – as well as a change in the publisher’s editorial line – to Bolloré’s reactionary agenda. More than 200 authors have since quit or refused to write another book for Grasset in protest.

Whether film becomes embroiled in such an existential fight remains to be seen. But wouldn’t it be nice to get back to talking about what’s taking place on screen rather than off it?

Getting to know a foreign country requires plenty of time on the ground, an effort to speak the language and a friendly guide, be they a partner or a close friend. I would now add a fourth pillar to that holy trinity: obtain a local driving license and take to the roads. I have been driving in Thailand for more than a year and the experience so far has been revelatory. 
 
The highways are fantastic, Bangkok’s traffic jams are avoidable with a bit of local knowledge and the Thai capital’s chaotic street scenes are a dream for anyone sitting behind the wheel. Thai drivers are remarkably polite. They routinely let other cars in and no one beeps. Seriously. No one beeps. I waited at a flashing orange light for five minutes, completely confused by this road signal, before the car behind me gave me a gentle toot. And I swear the horn on my sensible, six-seater Hyundai has been modified by a monk to deliver the same umph as a temple windchime.

This lack of honking and road rage more than makes up for some unique driving habits. Put Thais in a car, especially a pick-up truck, and suddenly they are in a rush to get somewhere. Vehicles habitually change lanes, undertake and jump into any gap. It can take a bit of getting used to but every country has its own idiosyncrasies (I once watched a tractor in China driving the wrong way down a motorway) and that’s all part of the charm. 
 
But to back up for a second, I should make it clear that I’m not a car guy and I was living a perfectly happy car-free existence in London, Hong Kong and Bangkok until two kids came along. My midlife U-turn was only meant to be a practical concession, a need for safe passage to football practice, swimming lessons and Muay Thai training. The Damascene conversion came as a complete surprise and now I must confess to loving driving in Thailand. What’s more, the timing of my newfound mobility could not have been better. 
 
A few months after I got my license, we started work on our new handbook about Thailand. This beautiful title, full of original photography and fresh reporting, was released last week and it’s the first in the series to venture outside Europe. We have gone out of our way to make sure that the whole country is captured across 224 pages. Naturally, this required plenty of roadtrips north, south, east and west. I highly recommend driving from Bangkok up to Chiang Mai, stopping off at former capitals Ayutthaya and Sukhothai. I did the return leg in one, epic 11-hour drive and felt very Thai, stopping off at multiple service stations for Americanos at Café Amazon and Thai Red Bull from the 7-Eleven convenience store.
 
The best thing about having a set of wheels in Chiang Mai is being able to explore the surrounding countryside. Some of my personal highlights from the book include visiting the beautiful Moonler furniture factory and driving 90 minutes further north to the Araksa Tea Garden – a must-visit. 
 
But our books are an invitation to relocate and set up a business as much as plan a holiday, so I also called in on the Australian founder of Superbee – a pioneer of beeswax wraps. Antoinette Jackson told me her entrepreneurial story of landing at the beach in Hua Hin before packing her family into a car, driving north and building a global business in the mountains around Chiang Mai.
  
For me, driving has become a weekly wellness routine alongside games of six-a-side football – rare opportunities to focus on one thing without looking at a phone screen. I am as guilty as the next person of jumping into the back of a cab and spending the whole journey replying to emails rather than watching what’s going on outside the window. Getting behind the wheel allows me to see more of the country and be a better correspondent. 
 
Now, I know advocating for more car journeys in the middle of a fuel (and climate) crisis might seem frivolous but petrol prices will soon normalise and the EV network in Thailand is expanding at the speed of a Toyota HiLux pick-up truck on Highway 32. If I worked for Thailand’s tourism authority, I would be building a campaign to promote driving. I’d take a leaf out of Australia’s book, which brands coastal roads as grand expeditions. The journey south on Highway 4 from Bangkok to Hua Hin, Phang Nga, Krabi and Koh Lanta could easily become the Grand Southern Soi. That will be my next driving adventure and our Thailand handbook will be coming along for the ride.
 
James Chambers is Monocle’s Asia editor. Click here to get your hands on a copy of ‘Thailand: The Monocle Handbook’. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.