Agalia Tan

Success once meant control over wealth, work, and the world around you but that scoreboard is shifting. Today, achievement is measured less by hard power, dominance and control; and more by soft power - how men lead, care, and connect. The old markers of power still linger, but they’re being rewritten in real time.

— VIRTUE, Guide to Modern

"I think of a place as something perpetually shifting, its meaning rearticulated by the time it holds and by those who inhabit it. My approach is to locate where the intrinsic character of a place becomes entangled with the narrative I want to convey, moving beyond surface description toward emotional and narrative potential."

Joonho Brian Ko

A viral video with half a million views is not a recommendation, it's actually crowd instruction.

 It's a distinction that's shaped Lonely Planet's recent thinking too, particularly with Artifact, a new zine that deliberately "doesn't exist to tell you where to go" - "it's more about reminding you why you travel in the first place".

Drawing on the earliest, stripped-back editions of the Lonely Planet guides, Artifact is a deliberately unhurried

Sam Blenkinsopp built Trippin a decade ago on exactly the premise that the best recommendations come from real people. "People actually creating culture on the ground like DJs, chefs, designers, artists."

The result of ignoring that, he says, is what urban theorists call AirSpace: a global monoculture of exposed brick and Edison bulbs, where you