A lack of affordable housing certainly feels like a global phenomenon. Companies are trying to 3D-print homes for under $100k. Berlin froze apartment rents back in 2019 because things were getting too expensive. And today, Hong Kong is working on building some sort of “light… Read More
All posts tagged “united kingdom”
European cross-border electricity interconnections
The EU has the following target in place for the sharing of electricity: The EU has set an interconnection target of at least 15% by 2030 to encourage EU countries to interconnect their installed electricity production capacity. This means that each country should have in place electricity… Read More
AI-generated poems at Expo 2020
Expo 2020 is currently being hosted by Dubai until March 31, 2022. The dates are all misaligned because this year’s World Expo was originally scheduled for last year. As is typical of World Expos, countries from around the world participate by building a physical pavilion.… Read More
How meaningful is the exodus from Hong Kong?
When I was in my early 20s, I spent a summer living and working in Taipei and Hong Kong. It was a wonderful experience. I’ll never forget my apartment in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay. It was a small single room with a small bed and… Read More
Housing supply and house price dynamics in the UK
In the fourth quarter of last year, the average house price to earnings ratio in the UK was about 8.4x. Apparently this is about as high as it has been in the past 120 years. But interestingly enough, if you go back to the 19th… Read More
Billionaire wealth in China grew by 1146% over the last decade
UBS and PwC’s recent report on billionaire wealth highlights some interesting trends about the global economy and global wealth. Billionaire wealth in mainland China is now second to only the United States, having grown by about 1146% from 2009 to 2020, compared to 170% in… Read More
Were the Victorians better city builders?
A team of researchers at UCL recently surveyed 2,500 households across the UK to see how the design of their homes and neighborhoods has impacted their experience during lockdown (May to June 2020). Perhaps most notably, the report, called Home Comforts, found that people living… Read More
Ecommerce during lockdown
The United States and the United Kingdom recently published some official statistics on the impacts that this pandemic has had on ecommerce. The above chart is from Benedict Evans and he has some more over here. It’s worth a click through. What is clear is… Read More
3D mapping of US precipitation
Alasdair Rae is back with another set of interesting maps. This time he maps out precipitation levels across the United Kingdom and the United States using cool 3D extruded mappings. He calls them rain shadow maps. Above is showing the average annual precipitation in the… Read More
The global effort to build more bike lanes
I received an email this week from a senior real estate executive who was sharing the fact that, in response to COVID, he had decided to give up driving completely. He was now cycling everywhere — whether for work or for personal errands. And it… Read More