bcdW Magazine

The 40-Year Flywheel: SXSW and the Making of Austin

One Brand, Two Cities — One Eats, One Grows. In 2005, a journalist tried to have himself arrested for eating chocolate. The company that stunt became — Tony's Chocolonely — went on to change two cities at once...

future city storytelling, Sim Eternal City, aging population urban design, floating city, 18-minute city, robot citizen, last mile delivery, low-density district, elder economy, urban depopulation

On the Uber–Delivery Hero acquisition — a city-storyteller's read You know the strange thing about a city? You can fly halfway around the world — new language, new climate, new faces — and walk into an apartment that...

A helicopter engineer turned educator built Latin America's largest crypto festival to fight scams — and to prove that the real barrier between communities is never technology, only the language in between.

The New York Knicks won their first NBA title in 53 years. James Dolan: “I’m sorry it took so long.” In Osaka, the Hanshin Tigers’ victories send thousands into the Dotonbori River. The World Cup does not produce this...

bcdW Current Today — bcdW East Asia Series · Week 2. Boston’s sequential model vs. Hangzhou’s integrated model. Research, development, production, sales, and consumption — all five inside one city, with Alibaba owning...

bcdW East Asia Series · Week 2. Singapore’s MICE bet: Marina Bay Sands was not built for tourists. It was built for the meeting. The Seed and the Mass — why AI makes in-person meetings more valuable, not less. Davos...

Jeju was Tamna Kingdom for more than a thousand years. Korea chose it as a test bed because it is a closed territory. 168 companies, 64.5 billion KRW, 4,660 transferred governance authorities, 100% renewable by 2030. At...

Every airport is outside the city. Every port is inside it. That is why, in an age of 4.7 billion air passengers, 35 million people still arrive by ship — and why the landmark at a cruise terminal is not the same as any...

bcdW East Asia Series · Week 1 · Friday Future City. Shanghai built two future cities. Both beautiful. Both expensive. The climate crisis is already displacing people who cannot afford the cities being built in...

East Asia Dispatch · Week 1 · A Special Edition: The Six East Asian Cities Where Starting Over at 50 Makes the Most Sense.

bcdW East Asia Series · Week 1 · June 3, 2026. South Korea’s simultaneous local elections. The Seoul mayor elected today inherits a fertility rate of 0.72, 783,000 foreign residents living parallel to Korean society...

Japan’s population is now the same size it was in 1989. 45 of 47 prefectures are shrinking. Thirty years of policy have not changed the trajectory. Today’s edition asks what actually works — in Seoul, Singapore...

Every City Ranking Measures What a City Has. We Measured What It Gives to Other Cities — and the Cities That Score Highest Are Not the Ones You Expect.