Borrowed

This issue started with a ladder. Our art director needed one for a weekend, and instead of buying it he borrowed it from a neighbour he had never spoken to. The ladder came back with a jar of plum jam. The neighbour now waters his plants in August.

We wanted to write about that small economy: libraries of books, tools and seeds, coats that pass between cousins, and the trust it takes to hand something you own to someone else. None of it shows up in the figures. All of it holds a city together.

Borrow this issue, if you like. Just bring it back.

— Ines Vallejo, editor