Lisbon, Seoul, Mexico City and Cape Town are thousands of kilometres apart — so why do their newest cafés, apartments, hotel lobbies and shopping streets increasingly share the same aesthetic?
This Across Timme investigation follows the forces behind the copy-paste city: global finance, standardized construction, chain retail, Airbnb, Instagram-friendly design and the strange business of selling “local authenticity” to a global audience. It also asks what cities can preserve without freezing themselves in the past.
Watch our previous investigation, The Private Company That Wants to Dim the Sun: https://youtu.be/OrURGODZTXw
Sources include a 2026 study in City, Culture and Society, Urban Studies research using 34.4 million Instagram interactions, comparative urban-form studies and UN-Habitat.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Can you identify the city?
00:20 Across Timme intro
00:30 The copy-paste layer
02:05 When buildings become spreadsheets
03:25 The algorithm learns interior design
05:05 Airbnb and packaged authenticity
06:20 The global feedback loop
07:45 What sameness really costs
09:05 How cities keep a sense of place
10:20 Look beyond the recommended list
#UrbanDesign #Architecture #Cities #Globalization #AcrossTimme
