Leicester found its most famous figure under a car park.
Five centuries after his death, the bones of Richard III were uncovered beneath tarmac and paint markings – an English king reduced to an inconvenience in a city that had forgotten it had buried him. When the discovery was finally made, it was packaged as a curiosity and a triumph of archaeology.
But perhaps it should have been recognised as something else entirely: a metaphor for how the city has too often dealt with uncomfortable truths by covering them.
Leicester presents itself as untroubled: diverse, modern, quietly successful. But underneath the slogans is a city transformed faster than its institutions, politics, and communities were ever prepared to handle.
It’s not just on the streets of Minneapolis: If you live in a Canadian city, you are surrounded by undocumented migrants trying to avoid the authorities. They are hidden in plain sight: at work on virtually any construction site or renovation job in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal; in hospitals and elder-care facilities; in restaurant kitchens; and quite possibly in your house, cleaning and taking care of
