Coming of age in 1990s Montreal, the concept of dynamic urban change was not exactly ingrained in my experience of the city. Despite a mini-boom of office tower construction in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the urban fabric of the city was, for the most part, one of decline. Despite its historical [...]
|
|||||
|
Given the inordinate amount of media attention lavished on Beijing over the past few years, it is not surprising that the city’s traffic congestion has gained a certain level of global infamy. During the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, Beijing’s clogged transportation arteries became veritable stars in their own right, receiving a good [...] Beyond all the big state hob-knobbing in Asia and the canned prophecies of American central bankers, something important took place today largely outside the realm of mainstream media obsession: the new head of Greenpeace International, Dr. Kumi Naidoo, finished his first day on the job. Dr. Naidoo, whom I had the pleasure of hearing speak [...] In case you missed the story on page A9 of your newspaper, the US House of Representatives recently passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Apart from the actual contents of the climate change bill itself, the very fact this even happened is a small victory in itself. Yes, opinions vary widely on the [...] Despite the financial and economic meltdown of the past few years, the infamous ‘American consumer’ remains front and center of many mainstream storylines. Will they return to the malls in droves, or will they save every penny? If they collapse from retail and interest rate exhaustion, who will pick up the overconsumption torch? [...] Just my luck: as I’m knee deep in final exam preparations, without the faintest thought given over to blogging, GM announces it is in talks to sell Hummer to a Chinese company. If there was ever a story to resurrect favourite ‘China Rising’ memes such as the nouveau riche, car culture and/or consumer delight, it [...] Hard as it is to believe (and problematic as it is for a blog which attempts some semblance of China relevance), it has now been slightly more than four years since I’ve set foot in the Middle Kingdom. As my interest in the country continues unabated (as do my machinations to return for a visit), [...] 2008, if anything, was the year when the crazy questions of “…what if ?” gave way to the sudden realities of “what now!?”. Everything that was never supposed to happen did: the Western consumer put away the credit cards, the Chinese economy hit a wall, stock markets plummeted, commodities collapsed and globalization and [...] Not to be crowded out by all the talk of American renewal, China today announced a massive economic stimulus plan consisting largely of spending on grand-scale urban and transportation infrastructure. This leads me to ask the most obvious question: How is this any different from what China has been doing for the better part [...] The tower of the Olympic Stadium fading to the background Unable to fly thousands of miles to show my Olympic spirit in a temporarily sanitized Beijing, I’ve had to settle on reading a timely little book titled Olympic Cities: City Agendas, Planning and the World’s Games, 1896-2012. Included in there is a chapter on the 1976 [...] |
|||||
|
Copyright © 2012 ApeRifle - All Rights Reserved |
|||||