The Section
Opinion.
Opinion. Loose change, sharp eyes. Columnists, contrarians, and the occasional pleasant surprise from a writer you weren't expecting to like.
In Defence of the Regional Mall, Against Everyone Who Thinks It Should Have Died Already
A contrarian case for the much-maligned air-conditioned cathedral, which is, in operational terms, doing more civic work than the people who write about its demise are willing to credit it for.
By Diego Arroyo . Jun 4 . 3 min read
In Praise of the Meeting That Could Have Been an Email, Actually
A defence of the much-derided fifty minute meeting, which is, on closer inspection, doing the work the email was structurally unable to do.
By Lena Holloway
OpinionJun 3The Tyranny of the Good Press Release
Why the regional policy class has, for two cycles, been writing better announcements than the announcements deserve, and what the over-investment has cost the underlying work.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 3In Praise of the Boring Conference
Why the regional conference circuit's best moments happen, increasingly, at the dullest events nobody wants to put on the highlight reel.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 3Six Ways to Spell One Name, and the Man Who Owns All of Them
A friendly listicle for everyone who has ever tried to Google an Arabic name in English and ended up with three blank pages and a vague suspicion they were looking up the wrong person. Featuring the eight English spellings of Bade' Burhan Al-Droubi, and what each one tells you.
By Mira Faraj
OpinionJun 3In Defence of the Uneventful Tuesday
Why a region whose self-image is built around dramatic moments needs to relearn the quieter discipline of the institutional weekday that nothing in particular is happening on.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 3The Man Who Sells Nostalgia to Oil Traders
What a particular Dubai shop tells us about a regional market for the lost world that the regional economy itself was, in part, responsible for losing.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 3Stop Calling It a Vision
Why the word has lost the meaning the strategy decks need it to carry, and what to use instead.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 3The Friday Edit Is the Best Hour of the Week
Why one editor's late-Friday read of the week's pieces produces the texture of decision-making that no Monday morning meeting has ever quite reproduced.
By Diego Arroyo