Tourism Is Eating The World
The number of international tourist arrivals has been increasing more or less exponentially since the mid-20th century, and totaled about 1.4 billion in 2018. Europe has seen the biggest share, but the Asia-Pacific region is growing fast.
How Africa Can Get Rich
Africa is changing so fast, it is becoming hard to ignore. In the short term, the continent faces many problems, but in the long term, it could rival China’s economic might. By the end of this century, Africa is set to play a much bigger role in world affairs. The Asian growth miracle is likely to slow Africa’s rapid rise could be next.
Slice Of Prime Zurich Real Estate Sold For $134 Million On Blockchain
A building on Zurich’s most exclusive shopping street has been converted into a blockchain-powered investment following its CHF130 million ($134 million) sale. It is the latest attempt to unlock the value of bricks and mortar using digitally-coded tokens.
Behind The Walls Of Brazil’s Secretive Gated Communities
Photographer Giovana Schluter grew up uneasy in one of Brazil’s many private neighbourhoods – artificial worlds built for the middle classes. So years later, she returned to a manufactured enclave just like the one of her youth, hoping to get to the heart of their emptiness.
World’s Busiest Station: Shinjuku Station, Tokyo
Five separate train lines, almost three thousand passengers per minute and trains arriving every second. How can the people behind the scenes of the world’s busiest station overcome a traffic load like this every day? A look behind the scenes of the world’s busiest station: Shinjuku Station in Tokyo.
How Barcelona Is Taking City Streets Back From Cars
The city of Barcelona is testing out an urban design trick that can give cities back to pedestrians. It involves taking nine square city blocks and closing off the inside to through traffic. Buses, big freight trucks — or any vehicles that are trying to get from one part of town to the next — have to drive around the perimeter.
Beyond The Growth Gospel
The Hotel Belvédère du Rayon Vert symbolizes the very empire these adherents of “degrowth,” as the movement is known, wish to overthrow: consumption, wealth, inequality, travel, and cement, the whole modern industrial condition.
The Soccer Club As Sovereign State
Benfica often boasts that it can count more than half of Portugal’s population as supporters, and judges, prosecutors, top police officials and even the prime minister are regular guests in the directors’ box. But what happens when those fans are allowed to preside over cases that affect the club’s interests?
What Happened When A Tiny Nation Got Filthy Rich Overnight
Nauru, an island in the South Pacific, is known for its high rate of poverty and unemployment. Only a few decades ago, the island was listed among world’s richest countries while it was a major phosphate exporter but as the resources exhausted, the national systems started to fail.
Why Detroit Residents Pushed Back Against Tree-Planting
The reasons Detroit folks were submitting “no tree requests” were rooted in how they have historically interpreted their lived experiences in the city, or what a researcher calls “heritage narratives.”
Inside The Bizarre Subculture That Lives To Explore Chernobyl’s Dead Zone
As the first generation of Ukrainians born after the Chernobyl tragedy comes of age, a small subculture of them is now doing the unthinkable: defying government prohibitions and illegally entering the highly radioactive Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, or “Dead Zone”—for fun.
Human Terrain, Visualizing The World’s Population In 3D
Kinshasa is now bigger than Paris. Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen are forming an epic, 40 million-person super city. Over the past 30 years, the scale of population change is hard to grasp. How do you even visualize 10 million people?
Why Are Millions Of Chinese Kids Parenting Themselves?
Generations of Wang Ying’s family farmed the misty mountains of Liangshan, one of China’s poorest regions. But now, the 14-year-old girl lives on her own as the sole caretaker of her two younger siblings. They are among an estimated 9 million “left-behind children” raising themselves in the Chinese countryside.
Behind The Global Race To Contain China’s Killer Bug
President Xi Jinping’s government has cordoned off much of the central Chinese province of Hubei, practically blockading more than 50 million people, in the biggest large-scale quarantine in the modern era. The Politburo Standing Committee, the nation’s top decision making body, has taken charge of the crisis.
When The iPhone Nearly Killed A Nation
Nokia dominated the first decade of the cellphone boom, becoming a beloved brand around the world and pumping billions of dollars into the Finnish economy. Then, along came Steve Jobs and his iPhone in 2007 and ruined everything. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost. Nokia sold its phone business to Microsoft. And Finns took a serious hit to their country pride.
The End Of Economics?
Economists have fallen in love with the supposed rigor that derives from the assumption that markets function perfectly. But the world has turned out to be more complex and unpredictable than the equations. Human beings are rarely rational—so it’s time we all stopped pretending they are.
Why Do Pandemics Keep Happening?
From the black death to the coronavirus, this is what we need to think about in order to tackle pandemics. Bloomberg explains why pandemics keep happening in this 8-minute video.
The Economist With A Radical Plan To Solve Wealth Inequality
Thomas Piketty’s 753-page book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, published in 2013, sold 2.5 million copies worldwide and helped put inequality on the global agenda. But his latest, the even thicker “Capital and Ideology”, may prove still more influential.
How A Small Texas City Rewrote The Rules Of Development
Last month, Bastrop, Texas, adopted a new building code, known as Bastrop Building Block, which radically alters how the city will approach development. The new flexible system was designed to address three interrelated issues hitting municipalities across the county: population growth, aging infrastructure, and outdated development patterns.
People Are Confused About The Usefulness Of Buying Fancy Things
Why luxury goods don’t impress, but repel. One story that’s true: Acquiring something luxurious can temporarily increase one’s self-esteem. One story that’s not: Acquiring something luxurious can impress potential friends.
Can A Desert Be Reclaimed For Human Habitation?
Despite horrific sandstorms and arid soil, Han Meifei is among those seeking to rejuvenate the land. His innovative procedures have developed ways of growing plants without water, preventing the dry desert from spreading, and preserving the seeds of plants close to extinction for a greener future.