Editor’s letter: The mobility improvements steering our way of life selections immediately

If you needed to identify Spain’s most profitable mobility participant, you may select its high-speed rail operator Renfe or maybe considered one of its automobile marques akin to Seat. But there’s one other model that’s arguably the nation’s nippiest participant on 4 wheels: Rolser, the maker of private procuring trollies. In Spain, you see, a product as soon as thought of in a lot of the world to be an adjunct sported solely by grannies has change into a fixture of most households – a whacking 63 per cent of Spaniards now have one parked of their properties.

Founded in 1966, the household firm makes greater than half 1,000,000 trolleys a yr at its manufacturing facility between Valencia and Alicante. Its prospects embody seniors but in addition artists, designers, younger mother and father and funky children. And gross sales are on a roll throughout Europe, the US and Asia. You can see the enchantment – in a world the place younger individuals eschew automobile possession, working {couples} forgo a weekly hypermarket go to in favour of procuring regionally and shops discourage the taking of plastic service luggage, having your individual set of retail procuring wheels merely is smart.

Mobility fashions transfer in attention-grabbing methods. That’s why this challenge, which focuses on how we get from A to B, options not solely an Expo devoted to the Rolser (so useful for delivering magazines!) but in addition sturdy footwear, a remade East German prepare with velour attract, Finnish lifts (as in elevators, not a gymnasium manoeuvre) and maybe one of many dinkiest automobiles that you simply’ll ever see, because of a nimble-minded Japanese designer. But these aren’t the one ways in which Monocle journal is on the transfer.

Our September challenge, you’ll quickly uncover, has a brand new look. While the livery on the entrance cowl could be unchanged, inside now we have gone for a brand new configuration and added some additional treats to the trolley. At the entrance of the journal, for instance, now we have launched a brand new Dispatch part through which we provide a mixture of remark, columns and information on all the pieces from travelators (and why they’re about to begin shifting quicker) to tips on how to full the each day commute in type. As we proceed to develop our digital providing and newsletters, we wish to make sure that we use print for what it does finest: showcase nice images and expansive, contemporary reporting.

Our report on Bofill Taller de Arquitectura in Barcelona is an ideal instance. This story of legacy and renewal explores the methods Pablo Bofill has taken the corporate that his father, Ricardo, began within the Sixties to new heights. Part of his success has come from doubling down on the rules that guided the agency in its earliest days – mainly that the studio needs to be a spot the place artists, engineers and philosophers come collectively.The studio is housed in a former cement manufacturing facility so huge that even 60 years later the Taller house remains to be a piece in progress. The photos alone will make you yearn to see it.

And right here’s some excellent news for individuals who have signed as much as this yr’s Monocle Quality of Life Conference, which takes place this month in Barcelona. We are organising a really particular go to to the Taller with the intention to see this extraordinary house in individual. Need any extra encouragement? Visit monocle.com to find the total programme, together with all of the inspirational audio system. It’s a spotlight of the monocle calendar and it could be great to fulfill you there.

If you wish to share an thought or ship me your mobility insights earlier than then, you’ll find me on [email protected]. Unless I’m down the outlets with my Rolser.