I HAVE A friend who says she weeps every time the plane descends over her hometown of Johannesburg. She has been away from South Africa for forty years but she is brought to tears whenever she catches sight of the city she left at the age of twenty. She never wants to return to live there permanently, but every time she flies in she is blindsided by emotion she cannot explain.

What is it about the place where you grew up? Can you draw more than sentimental memories from a home city you left behind a lifetime ago? In a world where mobility is coveted, where fluid connections with place are common, where someone in Milan or Prague or Perth can share precisely the same aspirations, does it matter where you are from?