America's First Suburb Turns 60 Almost 60 years ago, a planned community embodied the hopes and prosperity of America. Now, it represents a more realistic picture of the American experience. The BBC investigates Levittown, Pennsylvania, as part of a year-long series.
[more inside]
posted by modernnomad
on Nov 8, 2011 -
91 comments
Why Africa is leaving Europe behind: Africans are relishing something of a reversal in roles. The former colonial powers in Europe are wrestling with debt crises, austerity budgets, rising unemployment and social turmoil. By contrast much of sub-Saharan Africa can point to robust growth, better balanced books and rising capital inflows. There is an opportunity in this novel scenario: for Africa to assert itself on the global stage, and for European countries to take advantage of their historic footprint in Africa by stimulating commercial expansion to their south. But it is far from clear either side will grasp it. Recently.
posted by infini
on Aug 21, 2011 -
27 comments
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty In the 1990s, Paul Romer revolutionized economics. In the Aughts, he became rich as a software entrepreneur. Now he's trying to help the poorest countries grow rich—by convincing them to establish foreign-run "charter cities" within their borders. Romer's idea is unconventional, even neo-colonial—the best analogy is Britain's historic lease of Hong Kong. And against all odds, he just might make it happen. (via
cc)
[more inside]
posted by kliuless
on Jun 10, 2010 -
92 comments
The New Kaldor Facts: Ideas, Institutions, Population, and Human Capital [
pdf] - "For now, we think that progress is likely to be most rapid if we follow the example of the neoclassical model and
treat institutions the way the neoclassical model treated technology... Further out on the horizon, one may hope for a successful conclusion to the ongoing hunt for
a simple model [
1] of
institutional evolution. Combining that with the unified approach to growth outlined here would surely constitute
the economics equivalent of a grand unified theory..." [
2,
viz.
previously] This
might, as it were, be a subset of
collective cognition (or, possibly,
autism [
3]).
posted by kliuless
on Jul 14, 2009 -
9 comments
In 1972 the
Club of Rome published the famous book
Limits to Growth that predicted exponential growth would eventually lead to economic and environmental collapse. It was criticized by economists and largely ignored by politicians. Now Graham Turner at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (
CSIRO) in Australia has compared the book's predictions with data from the intervening years. According to Turner (
PDF report) changes in industrial production, food production and pollution are all in line with the book's predictions of collapse in the 21st century. According to the book, the path we have taken will cause decreasing resource availability and an escalating cost of extraction that triggers a slowdown of industry, which eventually results in economic collapse
some time after 2020.
(via; previously; previously)
posted by stbalbach
on Nov 23, 2008 -
80 comments
"
The model of economic development that we are currently pursuing is unsustainable. Our energy consumption per unit of GDP is seven times that of Japan, six times that of America, and even 2.8 times that of India. China’s labour productivity is less than 10 per cent of the world total, and yet our emissions are over 10 times higher than the global average." ~ Pan Yue - deputy director of China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). Part of a new generation of outspoken Chinese senior officials, Pan has given rise to a tide of environmental debate, attracting enormous attention and controversy.
Read his articles here : -
China: economic powerhouse, environmentally unsustainable -
part one and
part two
posted by infini
on Jul 29, 2007 -
34 comments
Boom! A master planned community. Boom! A big-box mall! Our Sprawling, Supersize Utopia. This article, by New York Times columnist David Brooks, takes a look at exploding suburbs and
exurban migration. This migration is nothing new, author Joel Garreau wrote extensively about it in his 1991 book
Edge Cities. The phenomonon really took off after World War II, during the period of post war prosperity, and is best represented by this
famous postwar American suburb. A veritable army of "suburban sprawl critics" has emerged over the years including
Jane Jacobs and
James Howard Knunstler plus
many others including some who are predicting the
immenent demise of suburbs because of
oil depletion. For Brooks the critics of suburbs "just regurgitate the same critiques decade after decade, regardless of the suburban reality flowering around them" but you can't dismiss what the architect Paolo Soleri says about American society that
"we have a society that is moving very rapidly to the
super-, super-, super-consumptive."
posted by thedailygrowl
on Apr 30, 2004 -
28 comments
U.S. job growth strongest in 4 years in March. Non-farm payrolls climbed 308,000 in March, the Labor Department said, the biggest gain since April 2000. However, the unemployment rate actually ticked upward from 5.6%, the two-year low seen in January and February, to 5.7% in March.
Note in passing that this took place during the Bush administration!
posted by msacheson
on Apr 2, 2004 -
67 comments
Employing a rather breath-taking counter,
Netsizer claims to track the growth of the internet (users and hosts) in real time based on a methodology briefly and unsatisfyingly explained
here. According to Netsizer the number of internet users already tops 800 million, but the
Cyber Atlas is projecting 700-950 million users in 2004. Does anybody really know what's going on?
posted by taz
on Sep 1, 2002 -
7 comments
Make way for the Mormons :) Reports of religions' demise have been greatly exaggerated. The Economist reports, "[w]ithin four decades, one in 20 Americans may be a Mormon and there may be 50m or more worldwide. How will outsiders react to the next world religion?" Minivans, trampolines and canned food, hooray!
posted by kliuless
on Feb 13, 2002 -
29 comments
