How Osaka's World Expo Compares to Its Famous Predecessors
The 2025 World Expo opened in Osaka in April with a $66 billion price tag, featuring pavilions from 158 countries. The event isn't generating the same buzz as the first world's fair held in the Japanese city in 1970, which featured a bold, futuristic theme and lots of wild architecture. And to many, these international spectacles are viewed as relics of the past.
But historian Charles Pappas argues that world's fairs are still worth having in an ever-more-fractious world. In a conversation with contributor Mark Byrnes, he discusses his new book Nobody Sits Like The French, which makes his case by tracing how the historic fairs of Paris (the city hosted seven since 1855) helped shape the infrastructure that transformed life in the French capital. They also discuss how the current expo stacks up to its more recent predecessors, many of which have been held in non-Western cities. Today on CityLab: Do World's Fairs Still Matter?
— Rthvika Suvarna
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