There’s some over-ambitious packing that occurs on the eve of a work trip. Running shoes, gym kit, swimming trunks, canoe: all make their way into the suitcase. Days later, as I prepare to make the journey home again, I usually spot – among the chaos, the wriggle of worn hosiery and now-crumpled shirts – my untouched sports kit. It’s right there, in one corner of my Rimowa suitcase, slumbering with all the intent of a hibernating dormouse. But things switched up on this excursion.

I have been with a Monocle squad at the Livex Liveability & Investment exhibition event in Abu Dhabi this week. On Thursday I found myself doing some very unusual manoeuvres in front of Monocle Radio colleague Tom Webb. We both went for the first time in our lives to a reformer Pilates class. And let me tell you, if my buttocks could speak, they would be calling out to passersby, “Help me! This man just hurt me!”

My downfall began when another colleague started rhapsodising about the thrill of getting reformed at her favourite Abu Dhabi exercise spot, Bodytree. Her name is Ailish – she’s blonde and Irish. I reveal all this because this woman is dangerous. If she approaches you, back away.

Ailish convinced Tom and me – I believe we were drinking cocktails at the time – that we should join her for a guaranteed “fun” workout. But then, an hour before our fitness rendezvous, “something” came up. She vanished. Tom and Tuck would be on their own. Now, though Tom would also be a newbie, he had one big advantage over me: youthfulness. He notches up barely 50 per cent of my time on this planet.

Our instructor turned out to be a nice gentleman called Carlos, while the rest of the class was made up of women who looked like they belonged in the cast of Cats. Carlos explained to these lithe ladies that there were two first-timers in their presence and I heard at least one of them emit a gasp. It seemed that we were in for it.

For anyone unaware of reformer Pilates, you spend the class lying on, kneeling on, interwoven with a sort of bed adorned with straps, resistance springs and metal bars. The last time I’d seen anything that looked like this was when, as a child, I went on a school trip to a medieval castle and spotted the torture devices that pulled the limbs from rebellious peasants. But there was no going back now.

I did my best to follow Carlos’s instructions over the next 50 minutes but there were moments when my lack of co-ordination might have pushed him to the edge. “Arch your back as though you were lying on a watermelon,” he urged me. “No, but keep your chest down!” I think that you would have struggled to pop a kumquat in there without a little bit of a chest lift. But Carlos wanted more. I wondered: would a pomelo suffice?

Things also weren’t helped by the fact that Tom was a natural. “Look at Tom, everyone – he’s flying like Peter Pan!” said Carlos at one point, with the delight of a dance master spotting a new Nureyev in the midst of his class. Or at least a Wayne Sleep. “Oh, just wonderful, Tom!” I hated them both at this point.

Then there was yet another buttock-busting manoeuvre that could, however, be mitigated by holding on to a metal bar. Just as I reached out for this appealing aid, Carlos appeared in front of me. “Give me your hand,” he said rather firmly. So for the next minute, as my cheeks burned like barbecuing spatchcocked chickens, I also had to impersonate a ballroom dance partner, smiling through clenched teeth.

When it was all finally over, we made our way to our team dinner. Ailish was there. “How was it?” she asked, looking, I admit, a mite concerned. It transpired that after she had booked the lessons for us, Bodytree had messaged her a warning – stressed with a red chilli-pepper emoji – that this class would be a little bit brutal for novices.

Look, with time I might forgive her, Tom and perhaps even Carlos, though my derriere will be harder to win over. It has requested to be left alone to think things through. It needs time to regroup.

Want to read more of Andrew’s columns? Click here.

The pedestrian mall was a fixture of North American cities from the 1960s to 1980s, typically installed to save ailing retail districts from the onslaught of indoor shopping malls. But as car-crazed North Americans began to migrate from city centres to the suburbs, closing a few blocks to automobile traffic was an insufficient bandage to staunch generational shifts in shopping habits. Few pedestrian malls survived into the 21st century, even as pedestrian zones wove their way into the fabric of cities around the globe. Next month, a 1km stretch of London’s Oxford Street will be pedestrianised, finally resolving a longstanding debate about the love-it-or-hate-it high street.

Today, cars once again get caught in the gridlock on downtown Vancouver’s Granville Street. But over the summer, a five-block stretch of this once-bustling, now-struggling road was closed to traffic and opened to people. Originally planned as a short-term intervention to create an outdoor gathering space during the 2026 Fifa World Cup, the plein-air party proved so popular that the city council voted to extend the experiment until 7 September.

Just as the barricades, picnic tables, café seating, outdoor games and public art have been stowed away for winter, there are now calls to bring it back – perhaps for good. “We envision ourselves potentially doing this year-round and longer term,” Councillor Lisa Dominato told the CBC. “Hopefully next summer.”

As the enthusiasm in Vancouver attests, North America has a newfound interest in opening streets where people can stroll and linger. After years of dithering, Seattle has finally banned private cars from the street fronting its famed Pike Place Market for much of the year, while Madison, Wisconsin turned State Street into a pedestrian zone last year. Philadelphia also pedestrianised a stretch of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway earlier this year. 

The sometimes-tired, 20th-century pedestrian malls that have persisted are now being rethought. Calgary’s Stephen Avenue completed the first phase of its revitalisation project in late June this year. Civic leaders in Minneapolis are debating how to revive Nicollet Mall, a signature Lawrence Halprin design which James Corner Field Operations previously spruced up. These refreshed versions can be called “the pedestrian mall 2.0” and are part of what the University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning professor Kelly Gregg describes as “a new moment of questioning the prioritisation of automobiles”.

Pedestrian mall 1.0: Urban renewal and small-city success

Beginning with two blocks of Kalamazoo, Michigan’s Burdick Street in 1959, more than 200 cities across North America converted their streets into pedestrian malls in the mid-20th century. Out went the asphalt and lane markings, and in came trees, benches, water fountains and artful pavers.

Austrian-American architect Victor Gruen – who aimed to recreate the pedestrian experience of his native Vienna – was the mastermind behind the revamp in Kalamazoo, as well as revitalisation plans in Fresno, California; Fort Worth, Texas; Rochester, New York; and Honolulu, Hawaii. Cities flush with federal urban renewal money eagerly hired him and his peers to keep shoppers coming downtown instead of heading to the shiny new malls on the urban fringe – many of which Gruen also designed.

In the end, however, the shopping malls prevailed. “It was a losing strategy economically,” says Gregg, adding that the design of pedestrian malls was “unable to counter the massive economic restructuring that cities were facing”.

The response was sometimes swift. Toronto’s summertime Yonge Street Mall, for example, only lasted four years from 1971 to 1974. And sometimes, it was agonising: Chicago’s State Street Mall limped along for nearly two decades until city leaders put the strip out of its misery in 1996, with a redesign that allowed car traffic and reduced the width of pavements. The city’s downfall was banning cars and bikes but still allowing buses. Instead of ambling along a pleasant street, Chicagoans had to choke on fumes. (Minneapolis is grappling with the same issue today.)

Big cities, such as Toronto and Chicago, were outliers with most pedestrian malls flourishing in smaller towns. While not all survived – Gruen’s mid-century designs were erased from Kalamazoo in 1998 and scrubbed from Fresno in 2017 – one common thread among those that have persisted is a university. Pedestrian malls have thrived in places such as Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado and The Ithaca Commons in New York state, where students create a steady stream of foot traffic.

Pedestrian mall 2.0: Big-city revival

Pedestrian malls in charming college towns have had an easier run than those in big cities that grapple with higher rates of retail vacancy, property crime, rough sleepers and open-air drug use. It was public safety perception that partly doomed the 20th-century’s pedestrian malls, as the absence of car traffic began to make the streets feel less safe.

The new wave of pedestrian malls, however, is not fixated on bringing customers into a bygone era of downtown shopfronts. “Downtowns are no longer just about retail,” says Gregg. “The pedestrian malls that have adapted are more focused on entertainment, bars and restaurants.”

This was definitely the case on Vancouver’s Granville Street, a designated entertainment district where one in four shopfronts is vacant. “We are fighting very hard to save this street,” says Jane Talbot, the president and CEO of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association. “We know that people love this street and that when we give them a reason to come to Granville Street, they will.”

Downtown Vancouver’s team programmed a summer of activities in the temporary pedestrian zone: free cotton candy, outdoor DJ sessions, an International Cat Day celebration, a Belmont Cameli lookalike contest, a morning baby rave for families. The list might resemble the lineup on a cruise ship but today’s North Americans are drawn downtown by intensive programming. 

In Vancouver’s case, the hyperactivity during the frenzied summer months is part of the city’s seasonal rhythm before winter hibernation, as well as an astute political move. A short-term move towards pedestrianisation “is a tactic that helps with the people who don’t want it,” says Talbot. “They’re far less likely to push back on a seasonal approach.”

The flip side, warned Gregg, is that cities can get stuck in a “permanent temporary” state, unwilling to invest in quality design. New York’s former transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan pushed to close Times Square and five blocks of Broadway to cars in 2009, which is widely considered the vanguard of 21st-century pedestrianisation in North American cities. It took almost a decade, however, to replace flimsy, fold-up café furniture with Snohetta-designed stone benches. As urban design critic Diana Lind writes, “Increasingly, when I see moveable chairs in a public space, I feel that it’s a cop out.”

One city bucking the trend is Denver, whose 16th Street Mall was a late arrival but one that came with star power: architects IM Pei and Henry Cobb collaborated with landscape architect Laurie Olin. The stretch opened in 1982 to public adulation and design plaudits for its “character-defining carpet of diamond-patterned, charcoal-grey, light-grey and Colorado-red granite pavers” inspired by Navajo blankets and rattlesnake skin.

Almost a year ago, the downtown street reopened after a $175m (€151m) revamp that replaced ailing locusts with a healthier tree canopy, upgraded underground utilities and added seating and play areas. By December of last year, the strip was back to pre-2020 levels of vibrancy, according to the Downtown Denver Partnership. But it had also dropped an important moniker in a key sign of the times: it’s just 16th Street now – no “mall” to be found.

Tokyo’s Shibuya neighbourhood said goodbye to one of its most famous institutions this week when Seibu department store closed its doors after 58 years. Thousands turned out in the final weeks as operations wound down. Some came to snap up a bargain – towels, kitchenware and handbags were piled high and going cheap – while many regulars came for a last visit to Top’s café. People of all ages (myself among them) came to take snaps of the Showa architecture, a postwar style that many are belatedly waking up to just as it’s being demolished across the city. Elegant design details, such as the staircases and the arched walkways that connected two of the buildings, were well worth recording.

For a generation, Seibu was the place that shaped Shibuya’s position at the heart of Japan’s youth culture. It opened in 1968, just as Japan was rebuilding its confidence after the Second World War and the economy was booming. Seiji Tsutsumi, son of the wealthy founder of the Seibu Railway company, established the retail space close to Shibuya Station. It helped to launch the careers of young Japanese fashion designers who were given space in Capsule Corner, where Shiro Kuramata created transparent plastic display pods to showcase his clothes. Seibu stocked international names but championed homegrown brands such as Issey Miyake, Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto. It also had all the other obligatory features of the Japanese department store – the basement food hall, the rooftop play area and, of course, the pet shop.

Shibuya has been responsible for many fashion trends, from Shibuyakaji (Shibuya casual) fashion in the 1980s to Shibuya-kei (Shibuya style) music in the 1990s. It was the epicentre of gyaru culture, whose startling look featured exaggeratedly loose socks and mahogany tans. Shibuya became the place to be in the 1970s, with the opening of era-defining shops such as Parco, Tokyu Hands and fashion emporium Shibuya 109. 

The crowds are still here but the retail landscape has changed. Seibu is no longer the cultural force that it once was. Shibuya 109 still throngs; Parco was demolished but reopened in 2019 with its cultural programme of exhibitions, plays and cinema still intact. Tokyu Hands – which rebranded as Hands in 2022 – continues to thrive but the Shibuya branch is closing for good in November. The shop has always been hard to define: you could buy a hamster (I did) or a reconditioned boom box – and rely on its well-informed staff to know exactly which type of glue or kitchen cleaner worked best. You could while away hours there on a rainy weekend. 

Though there are many other branches, the one in Shibuya is the mothership, a multi-story wonder on a cramped corner site. Real-estate company Hulic will redevelop the site as a luxury hotel. As someone who visits Hands at least once a week, it’s hard to imagine Shibuya without it. 
 
Some feel that Shibuya is losing its uniqueness, its streets dotted with global chains and its distinctive department stores gone. Even the famous scramble crossing is now besieged by tourists, as police try to shepherd stragglers who are determined to get the perfect photo. Still, it doesn’t do to be too curmudgeonly about change. Perhaps it’s more realistic to see Shibuya as a place that belongs to whoever goes there. After all, transformation and novelty were always part of the district’s appeal. Just across from Seibu, the finishing touches are being applied to Japan’s first multi-story wooden retail complex, designed by Foster + Partners. Another chapter begins. 

Fiona Wilson is Monocle’s Asia editor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

After more than two decades, the final US military personnel left their bases in Iraq on Wednesday. The departure comes as the Middle East is once again in turmoil, with a war in Iran that is causing ripple effects globally.

In 2003, US forces invaded Iraq to remove the nation’s dictatorial leader, Saddam Hussein, from power. The operation led to a yearslong US occupation of the country, as well as chaos and sectarian bloodshed. While the Americans left in 2011, they returned three years later to help the Iraqi forces to fight back against the Islamic State, which had seized large portions of the country. During the conflict, conservative estimates put the loss of Iraqi life at about 200,000 according to the Iraq Body Count Project, while the US lost around 4,500 service members. 

Renad Mansour, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme and director of the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House, shared his insights into the state of the region, what comes next for Iraqis and whether Western nations can learn anything from the war in Iraq with Monocle Radio’s The Globalist. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

The final US troops are leaving their bases in Iraq after two decades. As the region descends into further turmoil due to the war in Iran, do you think that Western nations have learned anything from recent history in the region?
What we’ve learned in the past few years is that we’re living in unprecedented times. Analysts don’t use that term lightly. The US administration, which was previously calling for a withdrawal from the Middle East, is now back in the region. It’s not just a war arena in one place, as we saw in Iraq. Conflicts rage across Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, the Gulf, Israel, Palestine and of course, Iran. The number of wars – not just in the Middle East but across the world – has more than doubled over the past decade. The world is on fire and politicians don’t appear to be interested in, or to be able to, put out some of these fires. So I think that we’re living in dangerous times and it’s hard to know how this will end, or what will come from it.

In that context, with the departure of the final US troops from Iraq, how will history see this particular chapter?
It’s certainly the greatest adventure of US foreign policy in a generation. The embassy in Baghdad, Iraq was America’s largest embassy in the world by far. So much attention was devoted to Iraq from 2003 onwards. Most of those in the Pentagon and across the US government have had some role with Iraq. Aside from Afghanistan, it was the foreign policy agenda for a generation. 

20-plus years since its invasion and occupation, the Americans areSt leaving. But it’s leaving a country that doesn’t have sovereignty, a government without ability to control its territory and armed groups linked to Iran that are able to fire drones and rockets – not just in Iraqi territory but across the Gulf, into Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. 

The Iraqi government is constantly ranked among the worst in terms of corruption and human development. Many Iraqis now regret the war and wish that it never happened. Of course, there is an argument that life under Saddam Hussein, under dictatorship and under sanctions, was incredibly difficult, so I don’t think that comparing Iraq before the war is necessarily helpful. But nonetheless, the US came in and broke the country into many pieces. And now the Iraqis are left to try and build something out of that.

How much influence does the US still have in the region, especially since you mentioned that militias sponsored by the Iranians are gaining control in Iraq? Where does the US’s balance of power now stand, especially as Iran gains influence in the region?
Today’s narrative is that the US’s influence is withering in the region. At the same time, the Gulf still expects America to be its security guarantor. I would say that most governments in the Middle East, from Syria to Lebanon and even Iraq, still look to the US. 

The Trump administration has had significant influence on formal governments. From Baghdad to Beirut, however, these governments are less able to control their territories and their own people. So you have these states that are withering away, unable to exercise power – and those are the pockets that Iran is hoping to exploit.

In reality you can have “mission accomplished” when it comes to the military. Just weeks after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, George Bush stood on the ship and declared “mission accomplished”. But the real war happens after that initial military operation and that’s where the region is now. The US is struggling to put the region back together so that it can maintain its influence over the Middle East.

A curious gathering took place on a recent afternoon at Frankfurt’s Dippemess, the city’s historic funfair. It represented the basketball club, the ice-hockey team, the rubbish collectors, the public-transport operator and the youth fire brigade. Even Germany’s central bank had sent someone along. The only unusual thing was that none of them had come in human form. Frankfurt was holding its annual mascot summit.

Bembli – a plush, oversized version of the grey-and-blue stoneware jug traditionally used to serve Frankfurt’s Apfelwein cider – hosted the gathering. The idea had been dreamt up rather spontaneously at last year’s event. “It seemed obvious: mascots just bring good vibes,” Patrick Hausmann, one of the organisers, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. This year, 15 local plush stars turned up.

Some, such as Dunking Kong the gorilla and Trevor the lion, are seasoned professionals, accustomed to working the crowds at basketball and ice-hockey games. Others keep a lower profile. Lisa, the public-transport operator’s mouse, leaves her burrow only once or twice a year. Some of the mascots are animals (or close enough): a meerkat, an eagle, a bee and a dragon. One is quite literally a walking euro.

Germany has had a complicated relationship with mascots. Things started promisingly with Waldi, the striped dachshund created by Elena Winschermann under Otl Aicher – the designer behind Lufthansa’s landmark 1960s corporate identity – for the 1972 Munich Olympics. Cheerful and resolutely unheroic, he became an ambassador for the friendlier postwar Germany. The country’s last big mascot, Goleo VI, fared less well: the shaggy lion of the 2006 World Cup wore a Germany shirt but, conspicuously, no trousers – a fact that prompted a weeklong national debate.

Goleo VI more or less killed off Germany’s remaining enthusiasm for mascots, which was a pity because the country once had a rich cast of them. Organisations that had long kept one on the payroll – including many of the nation’s regional broadcasters – retired their mascots in the following years or simply let them fade away. As marketing moved online, the slow-burning characters fell out of fashion, replaced by influencers with ready-made audiences.

At about the same time, ironically, Japan went in the opposite direction: from the mid-2000s, local mascots began multiplying at extraordinary speed, complete with dance competitions and popularity contests. Its yuru-chara (“loose characters”) represent almost everything: cities and prefectures, police departments and railway companies, tax offices and even prisons.

Some yuru-chara have become celebrities in their own right. Kumamon, the rosy-cheeked black bear created to promote the city Kumamoto, has become a national figure who has even been sent abroad. Funassyi, an unofficial pear fairy from Funabashi, built a career on being deliberately chaotic and even landed a deal with Universal Music Japan. And when JR East announced that its much-loved Suica Penguin would be retired in March 2027, fans reacted as though a celebrity had died.

In Japan, mascots are part of the civic PR playbook. Alongside promoting tourism, they make institutions feel less remote, giving otherwise abstract organisations a face. It might be a particularly good moment for Western cities to take note. At a time when urban identity is wavering and trust in institutions is wearing thin, people are looking for things that feel tangible and unmistakably local. A slightly ridiculous creature can do more for civic affection than a six-figure branding exercise.

Western Europe has a few lessons to take from Japan. First, institutions need to tolerate a little silliness. Western city governments and companies often worry that being playful means not being taken seriously but Japan demonstrates that credibility and absurdity can happily coexist. Second, keep it local and stick with it. The best Japanese mascots are long-term characters, rooted in local food, folklore, history and in-jokes. And third, let adults enjoy them too. Japan has made kawaii aesthetics perfectly respectable beyond childhood. Mascots shouldn’t only be wheeled out for school fêtes and funfairs but allowed into everyday life.

For mascots to catch on in the West, this admittedly might require a rethink but Frankfurt’s gathering offered a glimpse of what it might look like. People stopped for photographs with the mascots or simply lingered around them. There was no awkward small talk and no need to explain. Several of the city’s furry ambassadors have stories of grown adults approaching them for a long hug simply because they were having a bad day. Try getting that from a fancy logo.

Florian Siebeck is Monocle’s Frankfurt correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Why would you want to start your own business? Being an entrepreneur has a certain allure; it certainly makes for a better introduction when you meet someone at a party. But the sweat and stress that come with this job title should not be underestimated.

At the start-up stage, there’s money at stake (and often funds contributed by friends and family who wouldn’t mind seeing it come back to them one day). In the up-and-running years, questions about stamina arise: can you really keep working seven days a week? Then, when you hit your stride, there are additional anxieties to contend with. How can you continue growing at pace? Should you bring in investors – or even sell?

But, every year, hundreds of Monocle readers decide that it’s time to say farewell to the corporate life, give up on salary security and do their own thing. Though I imagine that most of them would like to make enough money to lead a comfortable life, for many there are other important factors to consider: a sense of freedom, doing something that they are genuinely passionate about and taking a chance.

And these are the ideas, the draws, that we unpack and investigate over the following pages. This is a magazine for entrepreneurs at every stage of the self-driven adventure. Across its pages, it offers encouragement, advice and some amusing asides.

One idea that becomes apparent is that you don’t have to come up with a crazy new idea to succeed. Often finessing something that already exists is the way to go – so don’t hold back while you search for that elusive gap in the market. In this issue, you will meet the switched-on team that has revitalised an old East German lighting brand and the crafty folks who are continuing centuries-old trades with the support of guilds.

There are also plenty of modern innovators who we would like to introduce you to, from a maker of tiles in Shanghai who uses recycled plates and pottery to the business exploring how co-working and homes for seniors can create a powerful union in Hamburg. There’s much to discover.

Then there’s the question of where you should run your business from, the places that will foster an entrepreneurial flair. We’ll take you on a tour of two Spanish outposts that are attracting design-minded start-ups: Galicia and Valencia. We walk you around a Jakarta market that has become a hothouse for generating new brands in Indonesia and more places besides.

Every entrepreneur needs to start their journey somewhere. Perhaps yours will begin after you finish reading this copy of The Entrepreneurs. Your business won’t be easy but it will be worthwhile. And it will be yours.

For more on starting up and running a company, ensure that you listen to Monocle’s weekly podcast, The Entrepreneurs.

In the village of Osøyro on the waters of the Fusafjorden on Norway’s west coast sits the base of Oselvarverkstaden – the Boatbuilder Guild of Os. It’s an organisation dedicated to the craft of constructing oselvar, the region’s traditional wooden vessels. Its headquarters, a specialised boatyard and workshop, was established with funding from the regional municipality in 1997 at a time when numbers of local boatbuilders, once in the hundreds, were dropping significantly and wooden hulls were increasingly being replaced by fibreglass alternatives.

Today the centre is used for training people in the 2,000-year-old craft. Here, masters instruct apprentices while archiving their knowledge to guarantee authenticity. “We don’t use drawings,” director Vidar Langeland tells Monocle, explaining that much of the work relies on instinct and a sharp eye. “Everything exists in the mind of the masters.”

The guildhall currently hosts a five-strong team, including 27-year-old apprentice Ashley Hallén, who arrived from Stockholm searching for a hands-on career. “This is a lot more physical and, in a way, more thoughtful,” she says, comparing Oselvarverkstaden with white-collar careers. “I have more guidance here.”

A boat can take up to 400 hours to build, so customers might wait months for a commission. But apprentices must also be patient: before learning to build vessels, they are taught how to select timber for every project and make their own tools. Many of the tools used at Oselvarverkstaden cannot be bought in a shop as they are designed for the profiles of each boat; the five models that the workshop produces are all unique.

“The differences can be almost invisible,” says Stig Salbu Henneman, the guild’s master boatbuilder. “But an experienced craftsman can recognise who made a vessel just by looking at its lines.” It’s an example of the kind of knowledge that only a guild model can provide. “The builders gather around completed boats and examine tiny variations in shape, sometimes down to fractions of an inch,” says Henneman. “It’s about quality control but it’s also another lesson for the apprentice.”

A further advantage of the guild environment is that apprentices learn many skills. They observe the entire process of building the craft, from forest to finished boat. Oselvarverkstaden’s teaching methods have not gone unnoticed: the guild has received recognition from Unesco for the safeguarding of cultural heritage. But for Henneman, the real output consists of more than just boats. “The purpose is to preserve knowledge,” he says. Though the guild might be young by international standards, it’s playing a part in protecting an old system and the idea that a skilled trade should be learnt by spending time alongside those who already know it best.
oselvarverkstaden.no

The farm-to-table concept comes instinctively to the French. More than half of the nation’s territory is given over to agriculture, amounting to 17.4 per cent of the EU’s total farm land. Speeding eastward from the capital on an RER train, Monocle spies uninterrupted fields of wheat, barley and corn.

We’re on our way to Presles-en-Brie, a commune 40km southeast of Paris, where canteen and grocery shop Mûre cultivates about 1.5 hectares of south-facing land in small plots. Unlike most commercial farms that tend to focus on a primary crop, Mûre’s produces 150 varieties of fruit and vegetables. This traditional style of farming is known as maraîchage (market gardening); those growing food in this way often sell crops directly to restaurants.

Mûre’s farm is almost completely unmechanised. There’s one machine to remove old roots; everything else is done by hand. This allows space that conventional farms would reserve for tractors to drive on to be used for growing instead; failed crops can also be more swiftly substituted for new varieties. As demand for locally grown produce has risen and farming has become more sensitive to the vicissitudes of extreme weather, maraîchage has proven the efficacy of old-fashioned farming methods.

Instead of selling its produce to other businesses, Mûre keeps things in the family. At 05.00, electric vehicles transport the farm’s produce to the company’s grocery shop in Paris’s residential 11th arrondissement and its five restaurant canteens. At 07.00, chefs begin using those ingredients to prepare dishes for the lunchtime rush. At about 12.00, city workers flock to their nearest Mûre outpost to feast on the resulting dishes; the next morning, this cycle starts again.

On paper, Arnaud Dalibot doesn’t seem like the type of person who would have masterminded such an operation. But in 2014, the former finance executive at Moët Hennessy swapped the champagne business for planting, recipe testing and the difficult task of building a farm. “At the time, it was à la mode to open a burger restaurant in Paris,” says Dalibot. “But there was also growing demand for organic vegetables, beyond those prepared by fine-dining institutions such as Paris’s three-Michelin-starred L’Arpège.”

The idea for Mûre, which means “ripe”, took root while Dalibot was working in New York, where the urban-growing trend was in full bloom. “I liked the idea of connecting agriculture with nourishing cooking,” he says. Returning to France, he became aware that 85 per cent of the nation’s produce was being exported. “Paris has 10 million inhabitants and I wanted them to benefit from what grows on French soil,” he adds. “I’m interested in feeding Parisians.”

It can be gruelling work. “Running a restaurant when you’re also the grower and supplier means starting from scratch every day,” he says. “It’s a 24-7 job.” As well as spending three days a week overseeing the farm’s operations and the rest zipping between his grocery shop and canteens on a bike, Dalibot also develops seasonal menus. At weekends, he collects eggs from the farm’s 250 chickens (“This one’s called Linda,” he says, pointing to a mischievous hen trampling on the Swiss chard) and looks after donkeys Timy and Toumou. The link between the farm and the table here is Dalibot himself.

Back in Paris at Mûre’s new canteen on Rue des Italiens, a steady stream of employees from neighbouring offices are brandishing their restaurant tickets. Dalibot wanted these tax-efficient meal vouchers, provided by employers and typically valued between €7 and €14, to dictate the prices. A hot meal at Mûre costs €10.50. “We have slim margins,” he says. But affordability is a priority. On the menu today is roasted vegetable lasagne, an aubergine and confit tomato quiche and a courgette pizza with Grana Padano. “Parisians are epicureans,” says Dalibot. “Their first concern is the taste. Price is their second preoccupation. Whether a dish is produced sustainably tends to be at the bottom of their list.”

Bold, instructive branding is fundamental to Dalibot’s efforts to improve awareness. Mûre’s motto – “La cuisine des gens qui sèment” (“The cuisine of those who sow”) – is plastered on chalkboards. He concedes that some of the business’s hungry consumers might not fully appreciate the message. “But that doesn’t matter to me,” he says with a shrug. “I know that we’re doing the right thing.”
mure.family

Few start-ups make as much noise during their first 100 days as Yi Design. The Chinese ceramic tile and brick company spent the spring of 2021 knocking on studio doors in Jingdezhen, China’s porcelain capital, asking to buy leftover ceramics and then transporting the broken plates, bowls and mugs to its factory outside the city centre. The resulting pile of high-grade porcelain – weighing millions of kilogrammes – provided the basis of the business’s product development and inspired its slogan, “We move mountains”.

Customers, including Chinese luxury fashion brands Erdos and Icicle, are using the YiTile, made from 70 per cent recycled materials, to kit out their shops and flagship boutiques. International expansion to Japan, the US, Australia and South Korea has come through several design- and eco-conscious clients across Europe. “Cos is extremely supportive of us and global studio Brinkworth is using our tiles for its New Balance shops,” says Caroline Cheng, Yi Design’s 63-year-old founder and creative director. She speaks to Monocle at the company’s headquarters in Shanghai, one of its several outposts alongside those in Jingdezhen, Dali and London.

Born in the UK to parents from Hong Kong who were scions of the Amoy soy-sauce empire, Cheng grew up surrounded by the family business but her career has been dedicated to ceramics rather than condiments. Her artworks sit in the collection of leading museums and she tutors at Central Saint Martins College of Art in London.

Her route into entrepreneurship started in 1991 when she joined Hong Kong’s The Pottery Workshop – a centre based in multiple locations across China that teaches students the art of handmade ceramics to support and provide them with a career after graduation. Now that her daughter has taken leadership of that operation, Cheng is dedicating most of her time to Yi Design.

Her brand’s products, including the YiBrick, an award-winning permeable brick made almost entirely from recycled materials, now sit in the material libraries of firms including Foster + Partners, Brinkworth and Heatherwick Studio.

The business is breaking even and Cheng says that she is in no rush to make a fortune. As interest in Yi Design’s products grows in influential circles, she is focusing on lowering the carbon emissions of her kilns, either by firing at cooler temperatures or making the transition to renewables. “In China, every business likes to explode but I want to do it slowly until one day paying a premium for recycled ceramics is suddenly something that everybody can do.”
yidesigngroup.com

For decades, mass emigration drained Poland of its brightest and best. In the first 10 years of the country’s membership of the EU, from 2004, about 5 per cent of citizens left the country – the majority of them settling in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the UK. Most were young people. A 2013 survey showed that as many as 69 per cent of Poles had either a family member or close friend living and working permanently abroad.

Those days are passing. Poland’s economy has grown 4 per cent on average every year since 2004. Salaries have tripled, disposable income has skyrocketed and Warsaw has one of the fastest-growing economies of Europe’s capitals. Poland is the continent’s land of opportunity – and its brain drain has reversed: between 2017 and 2024 at least 300,000 Poles who were residing abroad moved back home. Here, we meet four young Poles who have returned or turned down opportunities to leave.

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1.
Agnieszka Homanska
The political adviser

Agnieszka Homanska is rarely seen without her wheeled suitcase. The 27-year-old runs the political cabinet of Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski – so does a lot of travelling. Taking up the job three years ago meant not pursuing a master’s degree in political science at McGill University in Montréal. “I had already booked the flights,” she tells Monocle outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Warsaw. A graduate of the University of Warsaw, where she read applied linguistics and international relations, Homanska made a name for herself during the 2023 parliamentary election, running the campaign of Aleksandra Uznanska-Wisniewska, one of Poland’s youngest MPs. On the campaign trail, she bonded with Sikorski, who then offered her a job.

“I always wanted to be a diplomat,” she says. “I wanted to stay and strengthen Poland’s position in Europe.” In 2023, Homanska co-founded Zryw, a nonpartisan initiative that aims to convince students and graduates to become involved in public life. “Poland is recognised as a key European geopolitical player and our economic success story is well-known,” she says. “Yet we are having trouble telling that story internationally. My generation wants to change that.” This year, Zryw held six events to persuade graduates to work for the state. And those flights to Canada? “I went skiing there for two weeks,” Homanska says.

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2.
Michal Tarnowski
The civil servant

Michal Tarnowski considers himself a social entrepreneur. The 30-year-old returned to his homeland from the UK seven years ago to work as a social entrepreneur, during which time he developed a civil service fast-track scheme for young candidates. In 2025 he joined the Ministry of Digital Affairs to work on Poland’s digital services tax. “I always saw myself in a career with high public impact,” he says. “In Poland, which has stunning macroeconomic indicators but very low civic activity, that is a readily achievable goal.”

Tarnowski calls Poland a “partially mature country” in terms of public involvement. “With the civil service, the system often does not know how to make good use of your talent, especially if you studied abroad,” says Tarnowski, who has a PPE degree from the University of Oxford. “So you need to create space for yourself, which is not easy.” Still, Tarnowski would never dream of leaving Warsaw. “Over the past five years, this place has changed beyond recognition,” he says. “You can find employment, education and public service but also a great lifestyle.”

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3.
Marcin Szala
The educator

“We would often hear from students and parents that any foreign education was better than staying in Poland,” says Marcin Szala. “That is no longer the case.”

In 2022, Szala co-founded Liceum Artes Liberales (LAL), a private high school whose aim is to prepare students for 21st-century life. Spanning two floors of a vast office building in Warsaw’s Wola district, the space features relatively few doors or walls. This is supposed to instil in students a feeling of freedom. Unlike in the majority of schools, the teachers’ room is accessible to all – and the curriculum is similarly expansive. “Nowadays, students and their parents think differently about education,” says the 46-year-old, leaning against a whiteboard filled with ancient Greek and Latin words. He aims to introduce a sense of multidisciplinary curiosity into students’ minds by moving the conversation away from vocation and instead towards free thinking.

Students are required to take the responsibility of organising trips for themselves and their classmates to businesses, museums and educational institutions. They also run a programme called Current Affairs, inviting guest speakers to the school once a week to discuss the state of the world. Recent subjects have included the gig economy and the US government’s trade policy.

“It is an entirely reactive project,” says Szala. “Even with that in their schedule, our students still find time for extracurricular societies.” These include Latin, chess and philosophy clubs, which are treated as intrinsic to, rather than separate from, subjects such as chemistry and economics. Szala believes that the Polish education system now teaches STEM subjects at a similar level to those of its European peers. “This summer we had cases where students turned down offers from prestigious UK universities to enrol at the University of Warsaw.” Still, Szala laments a gap in business studies, as well as in the humanities and social sciences, which he says are still underfunded and underappreciated in Poland. With LAL, he aims to change that.

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4.
Aleksandra Pedraszewska
The fund manager

“Every major investor in Europe wants to be up to date with news from Poland,” says 32-year-old Aleksandra Pedraszewska, who left a career in tech in London to set up Vastpoint, a venture-capital fund that focuses on Polish start-ups. Monocle meets Pedraszewska at the Google Campus in Warsaw’s post-industrial Praga District, where she’s speaking at a conference held by a tech company in which she and her two co-founders have invested. “We have three decades of experience spanning London, Berlin and New York,” she says. Pedraszewska takes daily phone calls from curious overseas fund managers. “We aim to bring international investors here and show them the inside story of our economic miracle.”

ElevenLabs, valued at $11bn (€9.5bn) and a global market leader in AI-powered voice-to-text tech, often comes up in such conversations. Founded in Warsaw in 2022 by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski, it was largely shunned by Silicon Valley but has become synonymous with Poland’s economic miracle. Pedraszewska helps foreign investors avoid such oversights. “We have grown big enough as a market to attract international investors and give people opportunities to make a lot of money,” she says. “It’s hard to think of a situation more apt for an emerging manager like me.”

Still, challenges remain. “We have very good schools but we lack opportunities and capital for the very best ones to scale their talent up globally,” she says. “There is still not enough private capital for young companies to grow, so we keep losing people who move overseas, mostly to Silicon Valley. But that is a pan-European problem – Poland will not solve it alone.”