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1 month ago | 
worksinprogress.co | Ruxandra Teslo |Samuel Watling |Étienne Fortier-Dubois
In 2020, an odd food product hit the shelves of North American supermarkets, courtesy of the agrofood company Del Monte. It was a new type of pineapple, called the ‘Pinkglow’, notable for the color of its flesh: not the typical yellow, but a striking pink. It retailed for US$49, ten or twenty times as much as a regular pineapple. The hefty price tag was justified by the Pinkglow’s long development time. Del Monte claims it spent 16 years genetically engineering it.
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Aug 1, 2024 | 
worksinprogress.news | Samuel Watling
Notes on Progress are irregular pieces that only appear on our Substack. In this piece, Samuel Watling explains why some New Towns succeed and others fail. In the history of British planning the idea of a New Town is generally credited to the work of Ebenezer Howard. In his 1898 work To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform he advocated for a new society of interlinked settlements, each composed of an urban core of gentle density surrounded by countryside.
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Jul 10, 2024 | 
capx.co | Samuel Watling
Photo: Getty Images Britain has one of the worst housing shortages in the developed world, with a backlog of 4.3m homes It is essential to understand why earlier attempts at planning reform failed Planning reform cannot succeed unless it provides some benefit for local authorities and local votersThe new Chancellor’s commitment to building more homes we need is obviously to be welcomed.
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May 21, 2024 | 
worksinprogress.news | Samuel Watling
Works in Progress has a new issue! Check out our articles on:How Western societies conquered drunk driving, first through deterrence, and then by changing social norms.
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May 9, 2024 | 
worksinprogress.news | Samuel Watling
Stripe Press is hosting one of its legendary pop-ups in Paris: register to come. We (Works in Progress) are hosting drinks that same evening: come hang out with us. Our researcher and staff writer Samuel Watling explains why Marx, Engels, Owen, and especially Henry George wanted to abolish the city, and spread people evenly across the countryside.Don’t miss his piece explaining how planning restrictions are the modern-day equivalent of the Corn Laws.
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May 7, 2024 | 
housingcrisis.substack.com | Samuel Watling
Banning imports of foreign grains (such as wheat, oats and barley) – then known as corn – drives up the price of land in the home country. More marginal land is brought into cultivation, but in practice it is marginal for a reason. That means that the addition of this new land does not fully replace the imported grain and stop food prices increasing. As a result the best land, which is always cultivated, goes up in price in a pure windfall gain to its owner.
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May 23, 2023 | 
worksinprogress.co | Samuel Watling |Eric Gilliam |Emily Hamilton |Hannah Ritchie
23rd May 202322 Mins Ending acid rain was one of humanity’s greatest environmental successes. Here’s how it happened. The Statue of Liberty has not always been its iconic green. When it was first unveiled in 1886, it was a classic copper. But when copper reacts with oxygen and the right mix of pollutants, it takes on a green-blue hue. The key pollutant in this mix was sulfur.
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May 23, 2023 | 
worksinprogress.co | Samuel Watling |Eric Gilliam |John Myers |Emily Hamilton
23rd May 202324 Mins Washington, DC, has avoided the worst price rises that have plagued many other growing American cities. Arlington’s transit-oriented development might be the reason. Across much of the Western world, the price of housing far exceeds the cost of building it. Many regions are suffering from increasingly severe housing supply challenges, with the typical renter spending a quarter more on housing today than in 1980.
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May 23, 2023 | 
worksinprogress.co | Samuel Watling |Eric Gilliam |Emily Hamilton |John Myers
23rd May 202332 Mins Cheap, safe nuclear power is possible, but is all but prohibited in most Western countries. A regulatory sandbox for fission could shake us out of our regulatory sclerosis. We, and the world around us, are mainly the dust of long dead stars; our food, the same stardust transformed by the power of another star, our Sun. The Earth is warmed by the radiation from decaying stardust within. Stars furnish the power on which life depends. As well as life, stars bring death.
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May 23, 2023 | 
worksinprogress.co | Emily Hamilton |Niko McCarty |Eric Gilliam |Samuel Watling
23rd May 202340 Mins The history of attempts to reform planning in Britain is proof that political willpower is not enough: you need to be smart, not just brave. Since the Second World War, housing in Britain has become increasingly expensive and scarce. Following a pre-war housing boom in the 1930s, during which decade more houses were built than ever before or since, between 1947 and 1955, Labour and Conservative governments enacted strict new planning rules controlling development.
