Mohamed Bouazizi’s suicide in Tunisia is widely regarded as the spark that set off the “Arab Spring”. Whatever the revolutionary or anti-establishment intentions, what it spurred on raises profound questions about the nature of contemporary political protest.

Sprawling cities bring their own transportation needs. Where options can be limited, can these needs also bring the ability for social and economic change?

There is a strange contrast between politicians acting like hardnosed tycoons, on the one hand, and corporate authority figures touting social responsibilities on the other. What does this mean for public rhetoric on governing the nation-cum-economy?

Building walls is back on the political agenda, but as before it’s more about symbolism than security.

‘Motor City’ went from being a vision of the new United States to a place of severe poverty and urban decay. Why does it matter for the industrialized world?

What is the logic of ‘Value for Money’ in development sector, and could it force foreign aid agencies to choose between irrelevance and subterfuge?

Queerness has been associated with modernity in most twentieth-century debates on gender and sexuality. Héctor Domínguez Ruvalcaba looks at some queer modern myths, in the context of translating the queer into Latin American culture.

Zed talks with Kehinde Andrews, author of Back to Black, on the need to retell and reclaim Black radicalism for the 21st Century.

In this extract from Soil, Not Oil, Vandana Shiva questions the long-term environmental and economic impact of India’s burgeoning love affair with the motorcar