No. 112 — Late Summer Edition

PERIPHERY

Cover Story

The cities that decided to stop growing

A handful of mid-size towns are doing something almost unheard of in modern planning: capping their own population growth on purpose. We spent six weeks finding out why, and whether it's working.


Design

Why airports stopped announcing gates

A quiet redesign, five years in the making, at forty international hubs.

Culture

The second life of the mixtape

Vinyl came back first. Cassettes were never supposed to follow.

Long Read

Twelve years inside a seed vault

What it actually takes to save a species that hasn't gone extinct yet.

"The town didn't shrink. It just stopped pretending it needed to keep growing to matter."