Until October 20, 2026, the key points at the top of this essay linked to placeholder web addresses presented as sources. Those links have been removed. We also corrected annual inflation in September 2025 to about 32% (INDEC: 31.8%), where the essay gave a range of 32–40%; added INDEC's wage figures for the year to July 2025, which show registered private-sector wages ahead of inflation and national-government wages far behind; named the investment, Rio Tinto's Rincon lithium expansion, the first mining project approved under RIGI; softened a claim that this was the fastest disinflation in recent Argentine history; identified the May 2025 decree on essential services; and rewrote the sources paragraph to list only the sources used.
Until October 20, 2026, the key points at the top of this essay linked to placeholder web addresses presented as sources. Those links have been removed; the key points now cite the sources they rest on. Earlier versions quoted three people, a North End resident, a retired planner and a restaurant owner, whom we could not trace; we have removed them and their words, and rewritten those passages from the documented record. We also corrected: the key points, which overstated the Greenway's annual visitors and gave a rise in property values we could not source; the date the elevated highway came down (2004, not 2007) and the Greenway opened (2008); the time since completion (the project closed in 2007); the engineering at South Station and how slurry walls work; the stadium comparison for the soil removed; the timing of the property-value change, which the 2010 study dates to 2005–2009; and the bibliography, which listed sources we could not find and a book unrelated to Boston. The total cost now also gives the figure with interest.
Until October 20, 2026, the key points at the top of this essay linked to placeholder web addresses presented as sources. Those links have been removed; the key points now cite the sources they rest on. We also corrected several figures and examples: OECD's projection of plastic leaking into the environment (22 million tonnes a year, doubling to 44 million by 2060); the source of the share of plastic waste from municipal streams (UN-Habitat, not UNEP); the Paris 2024 results (52% less single-use plastic in drinks supply than London 2012), in place of a fountain count we could not confirm; the 52% figure is for an equivalent volume of drinks; Tübingen's packaging tax, upheld by the Federal Constitutional Court, whose per-meal cap a lower court struck down in 2023; Bergen's underground waste collection, its fees and its results, which come from the fee model rather than the pipes alone; the plastic collection rates in Delhi and Kolkata, now attributed to the dataset that reports them; and the GAIA review of jobs in repair and recycling. We also dated the recycling figures and corrected a claim that recycling stays in single digits even under optimistic assumptions. Figures for waste pulled from Vijayawada's canals and plastic waste generated in Lagos, which we could not confirm, were removed.
Until October 20, 2026, the key points at the top of this essay linked to placeholder web addresses presented as sources. Those links have been removed. We also corrected: Stockholm's 10% of heat from data centers, which is a target; claims that Stockholm meets most of its thermal demand from in-city sources and is close to its limit; Helsinki's large seawater heat pump, which we said was under construction and which the utility dropped in 2025; Los Angeles's rooftop solar potential, now attributed to the studies that estimate it, and a 29% rooftop share from a study area that excludes the city; London's data-center heat estimate (up to half a million homes) and Islington's Bunhill 2 network; the date of Vancouver's False Creek expansion (2024); and a description of rivers and sewers as seasonal storage, when they are sources and sinks of heat. Paris's district cooling now also carries its operator's efficiency figure.
Until October 20, 2026, the key points at the top of this essay linked to placeholder web addresses presented as sources. Those links have been removed. In the key points, the size of the 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew plan is now given as well over 150,000 acres, which the plan's detailed figures add up to, rather than the roughly 200,000 acres of later summaries. We also corrected the description of that acreage, which counted regional parks rather than neighborhood parks; removed a claim about how often the plan is misdated that we could not support; and removed a claim from the key points that the $15 billion estimate measures the cost of not acquiring land early; the estimate does not calculate that.
Until October 20, 2026, the key points at the top of this essay linked to placeholder web addresses presented as sources. Those links have been removed; the key points now cite the sources they rest on. We also corrected: the age of Bologna's porticoes (seven centuries, not a thousand years) and their medieval minimum height (2.66 m); the share of Vauban households without a car, now given from dated surveys rather than as a current figure, and the district's building heights and energy standard; that Vienna's Aspern Seestadt is served by the U-Bahn metro, not trams; Nordhavn's energy systems, removing a geothermal plant and a thermal-storage claim we could not confirm; the findings of the density, walkability and climate research cited; Barcelona's superblock results; and the bibliography's authors, titles and dates.
We have retracted this essay. It quoted Vera Katz as a Portland city councillor and as still living; she was never on the city council, served as Speaker of the Oregon House and as mayor of Portland, and died in 2017. Its other quotations, most of its figures and its reference list could not be verified, and its key points linked to sources that did not exist. The 1974 closure of Harbor Drive and the waterfront park that replaced it are real; this account of them did not meet our standards.
Until October 20, 2026, the key points at the top of this essay linked to placeholder web addresses presented as sources. Those links have been removed. We also corrected: the authors of Superdensity: The Sequel (2015), four London architecture practices rather than the Greater London Authority, and its comparison with high-rise schemes; Vienna's €10.5/m² average rent, which is citywide rather than for social housing, and the Austrian study linking limited-profit housing to lower private rents; the transit lines behind Vancouver's Broadway and Cambie rezoning; Victoria's population projection (10.3 million by 2051); Plan Melbourne's 20-minute neighbourhoods, defined as a 20-minute return walk, and its replacement by Plan for Victoria in 2025; and the bibliography.
We have retracted this essay. The people it quoted could not be found and appear not to exist, and its central figures were wrong: the Inner Loop East project filled roughly two-thirds of a mile of sunken expressway between 2014 and 2017 and freed about six acres, not 1.2 miles and 17 acres. Its reference list cited reports that could not be found, and its key points linked to sources that did not exist. The essay did not meet our standards and should not have been published.
Until October 20, 2026, the key points at the top of this essay linked to placeholder web addresses presented as sources. Those links have been removed. We also corrected: the plan of St Basil's Cathedral (eight chapels around a ninth); the botafumeiro at Santiago (a brass censer about one and a half metres tall); the craft traditions at Córdoba, which include later Mudéjar work; the colour of Strasbourg's sandstone spire; the source of Chartres's stone (the Berchères quarry) and how the cathedral was paid for; and the description of Seville's minaret.
We have retracted this essay. It described a "Twin Unbuild" plan to remove both the Claiborne and Pontchartrain expressways in New Orleans; no such plan exists. Most of the people it quoted could not be found, and the words it attributed to the civil rights activist Jerome Smith, who died in August 2026, have no source and came with a false account of his life. Most of its figures and studies could not be traced, and its key points linked to sources that did not exist. The essay did not meet our standards and should not have been published.
Until October 20, 2026, the key points at the top of this essay linked to placeholder web addresses presented as sources. Those links have been removed, and the first key point now cites its source. An earlier version quoted a Claiborne Avenue resident whom we could not trace; we have removed the quotation and described the avenue before the expressway from the documented record. We also removed a figure for property values beside the highway that we could not source, attributed the count of more than 500 homes to its source and to the Seventh Ward as well as Tremé, replaced a claim that planners chose Tremé over wealthier white neighborhoods with the documented account of the defeated riverfront expressway, and corrected the bibliography.