Ian Goldin and Tom Lee-Delvin, Age of the City: Why our future will be won or lost together, London: Bloomsbury, 2023, 256 pp.

From the cultural centres of Classic Antiquity, such as Athens and Rome, to the greatest modern metropolises like New York or Shanghai, cities have been the historical engine of progress and the stage for our best civilizational achievements — consider the birth of democracy in Athens, the Renaissance in Florence, the industrial revolution in Manchester, or the digital revolution in Palo Alto.

The authors of this book argue that cities concentrate contemporary challenges but also provide laboratories that will create solutions for the key challenges of the future. Over half of the world’s population lives in cities and it could be two thirds in 2050. Cities represent over 80% of the world’s GDP. The rise and evolution of cities in the twenty-first century provides the focus of the book, wherein the authors identify four major threats to a sustainable future: pandemics under globalization reliant on the free movement of people and commodities; grievous damage already caused by climate change; the inability to rein in economic and intergenerational inequality; and loneliness as signified by our drift into online social atomization. Add to that fast-paced globalization and technological change generating massive wealth concentration in a small number of expanding cities, leaving many smaller cities and towns behind, feeding into a new phase of populist resentment. Casting aside any defeatist view, Goldin and Lee-Delvin point to viable paths, prescribe priorities, and come up with realistic ways to roll back trends that have too long been allowed to take root.

Anu Bradford, Digital Empires: The global battle to regulate technology, New York: Oxford University Press, 2023, 352 pp.

Given an apparent scattering of economic actors, the truth is that globalization also relies on a concentration of leading companies which in fact control the mid-sized corporate fabric through systemic digitalization which, among other effects, harms data privacy and widens the gap between winners and losers. Anu Bradford, Columbia researcher and professor, examines three competing regulatory approaches. First you have the American model, centred on freedom of expression, a free Internet, incentives to innovation, and self-regulating tech firms. Then comes the Chinese model, based on a state-oriented vision of the digital economy which seeks to maximize China’s technological domination, maintaining social harmony and government control over its citizens’ communication. Finally, the European approach differs from both insofar as it is clearly guided by the concept of rights. According to the EU, regulatory intervention is necessary to uphold the fundamental rights of individuals, preserve society’s democratic framework and maintain a fair distribution of benefits under a digital economy.

Digital Empires not only sheds light on these matters but also goes on to discuss the way governments and tech companies navigate the inevitable conflicts that arise when these regulation models collide on the international plane. What digital regulation model will prevail in the fight for greater global influence is for now an open question. In the meantime, we witness regulatory battles and the decisive choices that governments, companies and citizens make, shaping the future ethos of a digital society. Which, at the end of the day, is the kind of society we’re all growing up in.

Helen Czerski, Blue Machine: How the ocean shapes our world, London: Torva, 2023, 464 pp. 
 
 
All of the oceans are a single engine powered by sunlight, driving massive flows of energy, water, life, and raw material. In The Blue Machine, physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski details the mechanics behind this defining feature of our planet, traveling from the depths of the sea to tropical coral reefs, estuaries feeding into shallow coastal waters to snowflakes in the Arctic. 
Drawing on histories, cultures, and animal life, Czerski explains how water temperature and salinity, gravity and plate tectonics interact in a complex dance, supporting life both large and small — from plankton to sea turtles to whales and even humankind. From the ancient Polynesians that sailed the Pacific reading the waves to the permanent residents of the deep such as the Greenland shark, which can live for centuries, Czerski presents, the messengers, passengers and travellers who all rely on the interconnected systems of vast currents, invisible oceanic walls and subaquatic waterfalls. 
Morre importantly, however, she reveals that although the ocean engine has sustained us for thousands of years, it now faces pressing threats. Learning how the ocean works and its indispensable role to the ecosystem, we can build more sustainable solutions to protect it, fighting climate change, preserving coastlines and biodiversity, safeguarding the future for coming generations. A timely, elegant, profoundly persuasive book.