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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Works in Progress is now available in print! Subscribe here: worksinprogress.co/print

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

Learn more about this breakthrough on our website (link in bio).

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

Guy Suits, General Electric’s director of research, overruled them and approved the funds. Shortly after, Project Superpressure would make its breakthrough.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

On the third occasion that the project manager asked for more money, General Electric’s research managers, having seen no tangible results and skeptical of future success, almost unanimously voted to discontinue their support.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

Four years of intense experimentation followed, during which Project Superpressure exhausted all of its original research budget and two additional funding allocations.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

In 1950, the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York, assembled a consortium of chemists, physicists, and engineers to form Project Superpressure, an effort to synthesize diamonds in the lab.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and vastly cheaper than mined diamonds.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

It benefits us all for there to be enough new people in each generation to sustain our way of life. Learn more about parenting as a public good on our website (link in bio).

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

It is assumed that when individuals decide to reproduce, they are the ones who benefit, and they are the ones responsible for the costs. But this way of looking at things neglects that the private decision to have a child has an important positive externality.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

Smaller populations are linked to slower technological development, and ageing populations seem to distort countries’ balance of political power and turn priorities away from the ambitious investments in infrastructure and innovation that we will need to face the challenges of climate change.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

Low birth rates may be bad rather than good news for our ability to deal with climate change.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Learn more about through running in our latest issue (link in bio).

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Through running is one of the most important themes in modern transport policy. Within ten kilometers of the center of Munich, there are 1.6 million people who are served by 284 stations and 194 tram stops, all of which receive a fast, frequent service.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

In Germany, the response to this problem was the Munich S-Bahn, which linked together 12 pre-existing suburban branch lines with a 4.3-kilometer-long tunnel. Using tunnels to link pre-existing lines in this manner is known as through running.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Across the world, many cities now puzzle over how they can pay for the vast costs of developing an all-new metro system to provide easy inner city access.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

In the nineteenth century, the societies of Europe and North America were profoundly transformed by the vast railway networks they built. When these railway networks entered cities, however, they faced a crucial problem: they had to stop.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

However, unlike the Orphan Drug Act, the accelerated approval pathway in the MUMS Act far surpassed what existed before. Head to our website (link in bio) to learn how the MUMS Act radically altered the future of drug safety not only for animals, but also for humans.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

Like the Orphan Drug Act, the MUMS Act created an accelerated approval pathway for drugs targeting neglected conditions or neglected species, offered grants and tax credits to offset the costs of the trials necessary to get the drugs approved, and extended marketing exclusivity rights.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

Recognizing the obstacles to releasing drugs for animals (the inexperience of the FDA and small monetary rewards), the animal health industry started working from the 1990s on creating an animal equivalent to the Orphan Drug Act.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

The Orphan Drug Act was intended to fix this. First, it created regulatory fast tracks, including an accelerated approval pathway. Second, it sought to minimize low revenue potential by offering tax credits and a greater length of time for market exclusivity.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

When FDA standards for drug safety and efficacy became stricter in the 1960s, drug developers almost abandoned rare diseases due to regulator unfamiliarity and low revenue potential.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

But even though it is no longer a superpower, the demographic decline didn’t hold back France’s economy. It is still a major economic power. Demographic decline does not inevitably lead to the death of civilisation.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

If the fertility transition had come a century later, there would be 250 million Frenchmen – more than Russia or Japan or Brazil. There would also be 320 million people of French ancestry abroad.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

We know this from language used in wills: did testators refer to God and Paradise and ask for perpetual Masses? Or did they use secular language? Ideas, not Napoleon, were what caused France to stop being a superpower.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

What happened? The Catholic Church started to hold less sway over the population. This was not restricted to intellectuals or the bourgeoisie. Ordinary Frenchmen paid less attention to the teachings of the Church.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

In England, fertility started declining in about 1850. In France, the decline started in about 1750.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

What happened? Birth rates declined. Specifically, even though every European country’s birth rates went down in the nineteenth century, France’s started declining a century before anywhere else.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Between 1792 and 1815, France fought most European countries at once, fielding over a million soldiers. Even though it was outnumbered, it took 23 years before France was finally defeated. But 55 years later, it was defeated in one battle by one country – Germany.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

In the eighteenth century, France was a superpower. It had the world’s second-largest empire, after the Spanish. One in 25 people worldwide was French.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

1760: 🇫🇷25 million people 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿5.5 million 2025 🇫🇷68 million 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿56 million If France’s population growth had kept pace with England’s, there would be 250 million Frenchmen and another 320 million abroad. What happened? 🧵 www.worksinprogress.news/p/570-millio...

worksinprogress.news

570 million Frenchmen

France's decline coincided with a collapse in its birth rate – now we know why.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

You can read Coby Lefkowitz's full piece on new, beautiful developments around the world here: www.worksinprogress.news/p/new-develo...

worksinprogress.news

Links in Progress: We can still build beautifully

A tour of interesting developments built in the last two decades

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Fort Greene Five in Brooklyn, NYC are indistinguishable from their predecessors that rose more than a century ago. We should not always mimic the past, but where context and will demand it, we can build as well as we once did, and in some respects, we can even build better.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Second Home, Hollywood is a breath of fresh air amidst the highways and parking lots in Los Angeles. The colorful pods that make up the office complex blur the line between indoor and outdoor, with 360 walls and garden workspaces to take full advantage of the California sun.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Weesperglide in Holland breaks the mold of suburban development with a bold use of natural materials. It’s familiar, but with a twist. Designed for families and oriented around courtyards, it is much denser than American developments, but remains genial, attractive, and comfortable.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

The level of detail and ambition of design in the Museum of Meenakari Heritage in Jaipur, India is all but non-existent in contemporary building practices. The Jodhpur red sandstone is an exquisite building material honored perfectly by the latticework ornamentation.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Terra cotta has been revived in wonderful ways in NYC in the last decade. The ultimate example is The Fitzroy, a luxury condo building just off the High Line. It shimmers in the daytime and broods enchantingly in jazz-age sophistication at night.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Located adjacent to a DC Metro stop, Chevy Chase Lake in Maryland is likely the finest collection of new mid-rise buildings in the country. The fantastic transit-oriented-development is even more remarkable given it is in an affluent and historically anti-development suburb.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Yale also has been building beautiful residential colleges. With rooms for 904 students and dining halls, lounges, study rooms, classrooms, and multi-purpose space, Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin Colleges are exceptional places at the confluence of ambition, prosperity, and skill.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee has transformed its campus over the last two decades from a nice-but-unremarkable place to one of the most attractive destinations for higher learning. E. Bronson Ingram College continues this fine tradition.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Catfiddle Street in Charleston, South Carolina is rare as it wasn’t built all at once, but each new home rose organically alongside its neighbors over 20 years. It’s a marvel of ‘inner-block urbanism’ where development happens within the block rather than on the streetfront.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

A wonderful transformation of a dreary structure, Wellington House in Wimbledon, London is a delightful mixed-use office building. The glazed ceramic tiles and sawtooth brickwork and the rounded windows that honor the corner make this building extraordinary.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

There exists a popular sentiment that we can’t build as well as we used to and our best days are behind us. But when we choose to, we can still build beautiful and interesting developments. Here’s a tour of 10 new projects that are creating a better built environment. 🧵

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

You can read the full piece by Michael Hopkins on how the cruise industry keeps growing and what lessons we can learn on land here: worksinprogress.co/issue/progre...

worksinprogress.co

Progress unmoored - Works in Progress

Airports and cities may face delays and rising costs, but cruise ships keep breaking records. They show what can still be built.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Some find the high density of modern cruise ships unappealing. But even older people, often seen as the biggest skeptics of high density living, enjoy cruise ships’ walkable, high-density, and diverse environments.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

As well as the limits from ports and bridges, local destinations must be able (and willing) to cope with 1000s of tourists. In response to this demand, cruise companies are creating their own destinations. 10+ private islands and peninsulas are owned by cruise lines, like CocoCay.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Destinations like Venice and Santorini have ports that are too shallow to handle the largest ships, while bridges like the Verrazano-Narrows outside NYC limit the height of cruise ships. With limited draughts and heights, the latest generation of megaships have expanded outwards.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Cruise ships could be even bigger and more numerous, but they are held back, not by the ships themselves, but the land-based infra they interact with like ports, bridges, and canals.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

The biggest trump card for cruise ships to escape regulation is the flag of convenience. Each ship sails under a one nation’s flag, obliging it to the laws of that nation. Ships register in countries with favorable regs like the Bahamas to benefit from fewer taxes and labor laws.

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Works in Progress @worksinprogress.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

While homes, trains, planes, and roads all come with some negative externalities on the people around them, which leads to opposition and cost-increasing regulations, cruise ships are either temporarily at port or out at sea, limiting their local impacts.

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