Current Today is bcdW Magazine's daily newsletter — one story, one city, by read through the many eyes of the world.

Recently, We launch in test flight. Each edition takes a single real story from one of our cities and asks: what does this mean for someone living somewhere else entirely? What ideas travel? What collaborations become possible?
Let’s get into it →

One year ago today, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie launched a crackdown on 16th and Mission Streets — the BART plaza that became the city's most visible symbol of open-air drug markets, illegal vending, and unhoused displacement. The city deployed a 24/7 police command van, dedicated street teams, and an alphabet soup of city agencies. Arrests near the intersection have skyrocketed. Streets are cleaner.

And yet, residents and merchants say the results remain uneven — crowds often return when police and ambassadors aren't present. Mission Local Last week, Lurie announced the next phase: more foot patrols between the 16th and 24th Street plazas, a dedicated sergeant, and expanded community ambassadors. "We're going to go all in," the mayor said, filming the announcement from the intersection itself. KRON4

The honest question a year in: can policing alone transform a transit plaza? Or does a neighborhood need something the police can't provide?

(Sources: Mission Local, KRON4 — March 2026)

Medellín → Medellín's transformation of the San Antonio neighborhood around its metro stations is one of the most cited urban turnaround stories of the past two decades. The key was not enforcement but urbanismo social — public libraries, escalators, art installations, and small business incubation built directly into the infrastructure. Mayor Lurie's expanded "community ambassador" program is a step in that direction. But Medellín's lesson is that ambassadors need something to point people toward, not just away from.

New York → The 42nd Street/Times Square turnaround of the 1990s was celebrated for decades — but it was accomplished partly by displacing the problem outward. SF officials have already acknowledged that Mission District crime is seeing "displacement" from other parts of the city where police operations have ramped up. Mission Local New York's experience suggests displacement is not transformation. The real test comes in five years.

Dubai → Dubai manages its public transit environments through a model of total curation — who enters, who vends, who stays. The result is orderly but also sterile. SF is trying to keep the human texture of the Mission alive while removing the danger. It's the harder problem to solve, and Dubai's model offers no answers. But it does clarify the trade-off.

Amman → Downtown Amman's street life — vendors, informal commerce, constant movement — would look chaotic by SF standards, and yet it functions. The difference may be that Amman's street economy is embedded in community relationships rather than detached from them. The illegal vending at 16th and Mission was, in part, a survival economy. Enforcement without alternative pathways leaves that underlying pressure untouched.

Austin → Austin's 6th Street and Red River corridors are entering the exact lifecycle that 16th and Mission represents — the collision between nightlife, displacement, informal economy, and policing. The window to learn from SF's year of data, before the same patterns entrench, is narrow. Austin's advantage: the problem is still early enough to address through design, not just enforcement.

Tel Aviv → Levinsky Park in south Tel Aviv — long a convergence point for migrants, informal markets, and unhoused populations — was transformed not by policing but by the combination of social services, small business licensing for informal vendors, and public space redesign. Some of those vendors now have storefronts. The park still has edge. But it has stopped being a crisis. SF has the resources. The question is whether it has the patience.

Your Next Opportunity Is Already Happening — Just Not Where You're Looking

The deal, the partner, the market, the project — it's out there. bcdW connects people who are ready to move with the places, people, and ideas that are ready to receive them. Business opportunities, revenue, partnerships, projects worth joining. Read the magazine that finds the connection before you do.

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Where Will the Olds Live When Everything Changes? We're All Getting There. Today's Old Is Tomorrow's Ours.

We are getting older. All of us. Faster than we planned, longer than we expected, in cities that were never designed for this. Climate is changing everything — heat, water, food, safety. And at the same time, the oldest generation in human history is growing larger, living longer, and asking a question no city has fully answered yet: where do we belong in all of this? Sim Eternal is the project building that story — not as a warning, not as a policy paper, but as a living narrative about the future city told by the people who will live in it the longest. The olds are not the problem. They are the point. And this city is theirs.

→ Visit Sim Eternal City Project

Current runs on one city, one story, every day. But the map is still being drawn.

We are looking for contributors who live and work inside the cities they write about — one story from your city, told the way only a local can tell it. We are also looking for readers who want to add their voice to other cities' stories — benchmarking, similar cases, collaboration ideas, a connection worth making. If a story from Medellín reminds you of something happening in your city, tell us. That response is the whole point.

Right now we are building across the Americas and Asia. But the dream is longer than that — from America to Afro-Eurasia, local to local, city to city, one real connection at a time.

More stories. More cities. More continents.

If you have one, send it.

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