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Whites are gradually coming back to the cities just as black people are leaving the cities for the suburbs and Hispanic people are skipping the cities entirely and heading directly for suburbs. The change is gradual and slow except for some cities like Atlanta and San Francisco where the change is becoming significant. As demographic changes take years to play out this change means that at some time in the near future America's cities will look differentas whites return. This change will only accelerate as more whites abandon long commutes from the suburbs as the price of gasoline keeps climbing and move closer to places of work in the cities.

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In over a decade after Mandela the A.N.C. under Jacob Zuma sees its vote drop from 62.5% to below 50%. The opposition Democratic Alliance wins 27% of the vote and the A.N.C. loses in the important cities of Johannesburg, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth. South Africa's urbanization is proceeding rapidly with the country 65% urban today. In this situation the country is seeing a political situation of racially diverse cities voting against the A.N.C. under Zuma's administration, which is seen as corrupt and mismanaging the economy. Zuma is seeing his support now left mostly in the rural areas. He is also losing the support of women. Mmsi Maimane is a young black lay preacher, who leads the Democratic Alliance, a party with its origins in liberal politics during the Apartheid era, with participaton of whites, coloreds, Asians and blacks in urban areas.

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Southern California, particularly Los Angles is hit with mega floods. BBC cites predictions for half a years rainfall to fall in a single day in February 2024.

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Researchers at Beihang University and Tsinghua University in Beijing studied how temperatures and relative humidity affected the natural transmission of coronavirus in 100 cities across China, The looked at data on January 21, 22 and 23, before Chinese authorites stopped its spread. They calculated that the infection was more contagious in northern China, with temperatures and relative humidity low, than among the cities along China's warmer and more humid south east coast. Their conclusion- high temperature and high relative humidity significantly reduce the transmission of coronavirus. The researchers are funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Researchers at the Institute of Virology, University of Maryland, have found that the consistently similar weather across the Northern Hemisphere between 30 degrees latitude and 50 degrees latitude north, running through China to South Korea, Japan, Iran, Italy, France, provides temperatures of between 5 and 11 degrees Celsius (41 to 51 degree Fahrenheit, with relative humidity between 44% to 84% and low specific and absolute humidity. The conditions in which the coronavirus thrives.  ...

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London as one of the largest megacities, but a fifth of the land area covered by treesmaking it one of the greenest cities.  And areas like Regents Park where this family moved from Kent, England.

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Jeff Flake, U.S. Senator from Arizona tells Republican candidates, "Distance yourself from Trump," and Flake is thinking not just of 2016, but of elections to come.  In the West generally it is not just about minorities, but also the educated white collar professionals in cities such as Salt Lake City, Denver and Phoenix. The percentage of registered Republicans in Colorado dropped by 4 percentage points since 2012, and now Democrats have the same share of registered voters. In Arizona Hillary Clinton has invested resources to register more Hispanics and minorities. The distancing from Trump by Romney and the shift of the Mormon vote is making Utah also a place where Clinton is catching up in polls. As a result most of the West now looks very different. The remaining western states of Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Alaska, say experts have a total of 13 of the 538 Electoral College votes. With Utah this is 19. 

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Cities that drop in the Livability Index of the Economist Intelligence Unit include New Delhi with poor air quality and petty crime slipping 6 places to 117  and Mumbai for culture downgrade by two places to 118. Karachi is at 136 place and Dhaka is the third lowest with weak infrastructure. Melbourne, Australia and Vienna, Austria are the top 2 places.

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The story of GM's self driving car Cruise stemming from its acquisition of a startup in California in 2016. It started with GM perceiving a threat from driverless cars and ride hailing firms. After the acquisition GM's share price rallied. Investments came in from Softbank and other companies. The company planned a robo-taxi service to test its cars in American cities. This story covers the accidents as GM pushed for it too early till California pulled out of the program.

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The Case-Shiller quarterly U.S. housing price index for the 1st quarter of 2012, shows annual declines in housing prices for 13 of 20 cities. The national numbers for all metro areas in the U.S. showed a 1.9% decrease on an annual basis from the prior year, and decline by 2% for the 1st quarter of 2012 compared to the prior quarter.

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Uber built up about $30 billion in operating losses and burnt up huge amounts of capital with its access to capital from from financial markets in the US, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. 2023 is the first year for profits of $1.43 billon of which the larger part of it $1 billion is from equity investments. It went public in 2019. Lyft a competitor of Uber has not yet turned a profit. Contrary to the general impression these kinds of startups have burnt enormous amounts of capital, and diverted capital from essential needs such as education, healthcare services, and public transportation. Consider the case of lack of investment in the New York subway system that lags so far behind that in other cities such as Tokyo to make it incomprehensible. The New York Port Bus Terminal  needed to be replaced- the planning took 10 years and the new terminal building will not be completed till 2032. Essential investments that improve the lives of millions of people in our cities are neglected or delayed. The real crowding out of capital from essential public needs is a feature of the Reagan era economics that have created many of the problems we face today of underfunding where it really counts. The capital allocation system is distorted so that capital does not generate proper returns or benefit the largest part of the population. ...

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Toyota sees a sharp drop in sales after street protests against Japan in Chinese cities. Japanese media reports show Toyota sales in China for September 2012 dropped to half the sales of 75,300 cars in August 2012. Feelings are strong on both sides and for the first time it appears to be affecting economic relations.

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A shortage of manpower is leading Russia to offer 3 month contracts to get recruits at $4000 a month four times the regular pay. Russia is also trying to get soldiers from past wars to join who are 40 plus years old. This report looks at the situation in Russia as it tries to avoid a mobilization and declaring war- the current operation is called a Special Operation. Street by street fighting and building by building fighting is leading to a loss of Russian troops even after artillery barrages in cities and towns in the eastern region.

 

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Two out of three people across France oppose the pension reforms as formulated by president Macron. The reform increases the number of years workers have to make contributions for the pension and increases the age to 64. It comes at a time of social change in France with workers and families under stress from a cost of living crisis, and loss of manufacturing in communities across France, a widening economic gap between cities and rural areas.  About 1.2 to 1.4 million people are expected to come out in the protests across France.

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Jason Gay writes in the WSJ that the last 48 hours were well worth it because in two days soccer fans proved the billionaire owners of soccer clubs wrong. Coaches like Guardiola, Klopp lamented the disconnection this was making with a few top soccer clubs going off on their own to create a super club of soccer clubs away from the riff raff of the smaller clubs in smaller cities. Pep Guardiola said "its not a sport when the relation between effort and success does not exist. Its not a sport when success is guaranteed."

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The US has a history of vaccination mandates, going back to the Revolutionary War under George Washington when all soldiers in 1777 were required to be vaccinated and Boston required the population to be vaccinated in 1809 for smallpox. Vaccine mandates were adopted during the measles, and diphtheria vaccination campaigns, and for other diseases. It is only through the mandates that these diseases were controlled. The coronavirus is no different as states and cities across the US take up mandated vaccination to avoid taking any risks with the fast spreading Delta variant.

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The State of the Union Address in 2026 cited the enormous impact on the world we know today over 2 centuries by this Nation. Jefferson breathed his last in 1826, between that and two persons in the chamber- including Air Force pilot who is 100 years old- between 1826 and 1926 when this pilot was born is a span of 100 years, and in this pilot's lifespan another 100 years. In this period, a couple of generations in our lifetimes, so much was achieved, said the president. So much of the address was about the potential ahead following the heroic efforts of the past. We are part of something larger than us, says the president, and this larger than us is the collective consciousness of the American Nation. "Two-hundred fifty years is a long time in the life of a nation. But in another sense, it's really a mere moment in the eye of history. Two of the gentlemen we met in the gallery this evening took their first breaths one century ago. One hundred years before that, on July 4th, 1826, the author of the Declaration of Independence, brilliant Thomas Jefferson, drew his last breath. Just a single long human life span separates the giants who declared and won our independence from the heroes who stand among us tonight. Everything our nation has done, everything we have achieved, has been the work of those few great lifetimes. In those brief chapters, Americans built this nation from 13 humble colonies into the pinnacle of human civilization and human freedom. The strongest, wealthiest, most powerful, most successful nation in all of history. Americans ventured out across the daunting and dangerous continent. We carved pass through an unforgiving wilderness, settled a boundless frontier, and tamed the beautiful but very, very dangerous wild west. From empty marshes and wide-open plains, we raised up the world's greatest cities. Together we mastered the world's mightiest industries, shattered history's monstrous tyrannies. And we liberated millions from the chains of fascism, communism, oppression and terror." Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and JFK, through their efforts and the efforts of scientists and industrial pioneers, and of the People of the United States, of educators and scientific endeavors, so much was achieved, and so much lies ahead. ...