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Greater Melbourne lost 60000 people in year ending September 2021-Melbourne overtaken by Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide in housing prices by 2026. By 2019 Melbourne housing prices were rising so rapidly it was expected to surpass Sydney. In 2026 Australia's average home is about 900,000 and Sydney at 1.3 million Australian dollars, Melbourne below national average at 800,000. Toorak, South Yarra, and Armadale, Brighton, Hawthorn, Kew are some of the suburbs of Melbourne that are popular.

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Considering the 15 comments on the Penn Station Rebuild the public has lost interest in forever building project for the dinghy building that is the home of transportation in New York City. The latest is that the federal government has taken over at the urging of NY Governor Kathy Hochul who persuaded DJT to do it. This means state funds of $1.3 billion will be saved and DJT asserted federal authority over the project with Amtrak as owner of the Penn Station planning this out. Construction will begin in 18 months at a cost of $7 billion. The previous estimate was $6 billion. A similar situation is seen for the dilapidated bridge in Baltimore that took years to get the project off the ground as one plan was ditched for another 3 years after the bridge disaster. At this rate the bullet train projects between Ahmedabad and Mumbai will be repeated across many Indian cities before Penn Station is rebuilt, before Baltimore Bridge is rebuilt.

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Guardian's Essay on the War and how it has undone Iran pushed it back by decades with internal suppression of dissent, the diversion of vital resources that could be used for building the economy and standards of living, failing to build a sovereign investment fund like Norway and other countries setting aside money for a rainy day. Much of the young educated voters and business in markets is in the cities in Asia and this class has to be integrated into development to create advanced developed nations instead of a small class of people controlling the nation's resources under an ideological or religious sectarian leadership. It failed in Spain in the Franco years, and now in Venezuela and Iran, Pakistan, because it does not grasp what happened in Asia- in China, in India, in South Korea where even under communist (China), military (South Korea), the integration of the students, middle class business, all sectors of society, leads to all sections of society building advanced societies improving education, healthcare, and modernization infrastructure, joining Europe and the US to build the future of science and technology. ...

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Stargazing in India from Hanle Ladakh to Pench Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, and in Rajasthan desert skies popular with astrotourism 2026. 30,000 gather in Hanle, Ladakh in high Himalayas. 

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Obama deal simply pushed back till 2030 Iran's development of nuclear weapons but even that was not achieved as Iran quickly moved to nuclear weapons capabilities by 2026. The basic problem and it does not go away with wishful thinking as the Obama administration had done or not taking responsibility as the EU, China have done. The basic problem is that Iran wants a nuclear weapon. When it seeks the elimination of the Jewish state, and a Shia state that competes with the Arab states this become a problem not just for Israel but for the entire Middle East and for western civilization that the Obama administration never was able to recognize and accept. After the experience of the 1930-1945 period in Germany a traumatic period for western civilization itself-  the German nation and Europe, the US, western civilization itself is committed to a safe society and nation for the Jewish people. This includes India's 1.4 billion people and in many ways China and Russia. Which also recognizes the need for the Arab nations to live in peaceful coexistence with Israel, Christian minorities in Arab countries and with Iran, Palestinian people to be protected, and respected, as well as peaceful co-existence between the urban areas of Iran with the influence since 1800 of Russia, France and Britain and the rural religious areas of Iran that form the core of the IRGC. This is the basic problem- EU, US see a civilization issue and would never allow a nuclear weapon. Arab states are also against a rival religious Shia sectarian IRGC run Middle East, and the Iranian state is itself divided between its modern one in the major cities that do not see a nuclear weapon as essential and the rural one of the IRGC in the rural areas and the countryside that seeks a nuclear weapon. It is this situation the US, not just DJT or Republicans face today, it is one that all Americans, Europe, India, China, Japan and Russia, which have modernized and adopted western civilization's ideas of the Renaissance and Enlightenment as their own have to face up to. One that does not overlook the vital fact that the nuclear proliferation in dangerous parts of the world like the Middle East with more recent conflicts for 50 years than any other part of the world including the Balkans and Ukraine, is simply unacceptable for the people of the world. A world in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe, NorthAmerica which seek better standards of living and modernization in infrastructure, industry, and a better life using the ideas of the Modern World. ...

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DJT arrives in Beijing China May 13 2026. Topics that will be discussed are - the Iran War and how to resolve it, trade with China, tariffs, and US Taiwan policy. China continues to run trillion dollar surplus in trade with the world with lower trade surplus with the US after DJT tariffs. From $295 billion in 2024 under Biden the new DJT administration with DJT, Bessent and Jamieson has lowered this to $202 billion by 2026. In that same period the world trade surplus of China has increased from $992 to $1.19 billion. It is not clear whether some of the drop in the US figures is from China sending product through channels to Mexico and Vietnam that is then shipped to the US. DJT showed results in his policies by lowering the trade imbalance by 32%, while trade imbalance with the rest of the world has worsened (increase in trade surplus of China) by 20%. What does this show? We can safely assume that excessive trade imbalances are not in either China, EU, or America's interest. China increases trade and political friction by doing so, and it leaves its own policy weak by overdependence on exports, too little effort to increase domestic consumption and living standards.  FOr the US and EU trade imbalances with China of over $1 trillion reflect misguided policy at the top by US and EU decision makers and governments. By exposing their manufacturing base they are losing valuable jobs by the millions and creating a situation where the few with good jobs in select industries live in large cities and the rest of the country in smaller towns and rural areas suffering from lack of amanufacturing base. This weakens the investment base for public services and leads to lack of investment ininfrastructure. This is called deindustrialization which the DJT and Biden administrations both fight hard to reverse for the last 10 years since the disastrous years of the Obama and Bush administrations 2000-2016. For this reason we can say a good Republican is as good as a good Democrat, a bad Republican is as bad as a bad Democrat, political labels are just that labels. The media in US and EU are on a wrong footing and still fail to cover this the way it should be covered to shake off the lethargy in public sentiment in the US so that a rapid drive to reindustrialize and build new new infrastructure on top of the old that was built after World War 1 can take place. In today's world India is stepping up with major infrastructure building just as the US and EU ramp up their rebuilding.  ...

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DW.com provides these memorable and beautiful pictures of Christmas lights in European cities from Basel to Vienna, London and Stockholm to Prague and Katowice- street illumination and decorations in cities.

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A drop in crime to pre pandemic levels in American cities.

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Airbnb in France and lack of housing for local people, changes in neighborhoods, as more apartments are listed on Airbnb for tourists. This is affecting cities such as Nice, La Rochelle and across France as shown in this report in Le Monde, changing the face of neighborhoods.

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The Economist offers this exceptional account of how education makes a big difference in how two cities one hours train ride from London view exit from the European Union. Both have younger than average populations, are growing rapidly, and mostly white collar populations. Cambridge has one in two persons who have gone to university study, Peterbrough is predominantly a city of school leavers, one has many people who have studied till age 21, the other Peterborough where many people left school at age 16. Cambridge it shows is strongly pro-EU, Peterborough is euro skeptic. YouGov confirms the correlation with education of EU support, with the better educated graduates supporting EU membership 62% to 38%, less educated till age 16 43% supporting EU membership and 57% opposing. It says skills for a globalizing compettitive economy and the lack of these skills are creating two types of population with less and less room between them, not good for democracy, and something that will take decades of work to correct....

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Walks in Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, Seoul, and other cities to explore different parts of the city.

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Cities that have spent a lot of money in expanding cycling infrastructure are shown in these pictures from DW.com. Copenhagen is where the Tour De France will start this year. Other cities are Paris, Amsterdam, Munster, Barcelona, Basel and Trondheim.

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Indianapolis and Terre Haute in Indiana, Columbus in Georgia, Whitesburg in Kentucky and Hutchinson near Wichita, Kansas are smaller cities in areas that suffered a drain of people in the past. They are cities that offer $5000 to $7000 in 2025 to remote workers to attract them to move back to the midwest and central states.

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Democrats continue to believe they lost in 2024 because they did not attack DJT enough. This fails to cite issues such as cost of living- surge in the third year of the Biden administration with 20% increase in prices and Biden failing to take notice and address this quickly. A wave of illegal immigration- the failure of Mayorkas, himself a Cuban immigrant in 1960, put in charge of Homeland Security and ICE, and Harris who was an attorney helping indigents in inner city San Francisco, to grasp the fears of border states and southern states. The failure to understand that the border was open and inviting waves of illegal immigrants, some with questionable backgrounds. This issue created a sense of unease in the fabric of society and American people. Other issues simply showed how Harris could not relate to the conservative people and average people in the country in the cultural aspect such as transgender, rural America. Biden pulling out suddenly, loss of rural vote- failure of Democrats since Obama to pay attention to rural voters, Harris not appealing to the white male vote in the US, are other factors that hurt Democrats. DJT gained with the shooting incident in Pennsylvania in which he survived, and the perception raised during a garbage truck and DJT photo that the Democrats derided, seen by the public as looking down on working class people. Democrats never really grasped how the political system had gone in reverse- the Republicans had put cultural aspect first and conservative now meant working class voters and white voters in rural areas/small towns, big cities, ( the Archie Bunker type of an earlier era who was now a Democrat, not the college educated and Ivy league Harvard type that had taken over the Democratic party). This continues to this day with some paradox as the business class and the billionaire class sit alongside the working class person in the Republican party DJT created. DJT did this in 2016 by pulling together workers hurt by Bush and Obama's policies favoring the educated classes and affluent, ignoring rural areas and farmers, and committing US to wars in the Middle East that squandered the Nations' resources and human lives. This was aggravated in the Biden/Harris/Mayorkas years by letting in migrants across the border by the millions that created a great deal of unease in the working classes. In this way labor unions or their rank and file left the Democratic party- a problem that plagues Democrats to this day, that Biden tried but failed to fix. The border issues had become complex by the latter part of the Biden administration because of the complete collapse of Venezuelan economy and the drug cartels in Mexico smuggling people and drugs across the border, for which the Biden administration or Harris had no answer.  It was the failure of administrations to continue the Monroe Doctrine in the form given by FDR as "Good Neigbor Policy," and JFK as the Alliance for Progress, allowing drug cartels and foreign European powers to intervene in the western hemisphere, desorying good governance in Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba and other nations in Latin America. By the second year of the DJT administration Venezuela, and the border were brought under control, and the situation in Mexico put in a new direction. ...

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In the US Los Angeles and New York City are the two most expensive cities. In Europe, Paris, Copenhagen, Zurich and Geneva. Tel Aviv is ranked the most expensive city in the world. In Asia Osaka and Singapore. Expensive is not a desirable situation as these cities have seen costs soar and become overcrowded, with better alternatives for visitors.

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The coronavirus will change the way cities work turning commercial spaces into mixed work life areas as cities are redesigned to make them work differently.

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Under a landmark ruling by a federal court in Leipzig, German cities can now ban older diesel engine vehicles. The cities of Stuttgart and Dusseldorf are allowed to legally ban older higher polluting diesel cars from zones that are badly affected by air pollution. Environmental group DUH brought the lawsuit after 70 German cities exceeded European Union limits for nitrogen oxides (NOx) in 2017. NOx emissions can cause respiratory disease and difficulty breathing. Diesel engines produce high levels of nitrogen oxide, and low levels of carbon dioxide. EU air quality standards are not being met in cities across Europe, so that this could set a precedent for Europe, says the BBC. Of the 15 million diesel cars on German roads only 2.7 million meet the latest Euro-6 standards, according to German automotive watchdog agency. Diesel car market share is dropping- falling to 39% in 2017 from 48% in 2015. The VW diesel emissions scandal in 2015 further eroded public confidence. The German government already has suggested alternatives such as offering free public transport in cities with poor air quality. The government opposed the ruling because it did not want the car industry to bear the additional cost of retrofitting older vehicles at a time when German carmakers were investing in electric vehicles.  Yet the trend is clear. Paris, Madrid, Mexico City, Athens have pledged to ban diesel vehicles from the centre of cities by 2025, with Copenhagen doing this in 2019. ...

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Cities including London, New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Melbourne, Milan, Caracas, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Vancouver, have pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050.

Reducing transport emissions is a big challenge. London has Ultra low Emission Zone which encourages people to switch to low emission vehicles.  Paris is creating 650 kilometres of cycling paths and plans to open up the whole city to bicycles by 2026. Buildings have a large carbon footprint - producing 38% of global carbon emissions. Of this 11% are in the construction materials of steel and concrete, Wood is an alternative material that is being tried in buildings. Passive heating is a way to heat or cool buildings by building underground canals around a building and using the natural temperatures of the earth to cool or heat the air above. This is seen in the Energon building in Ulm, Germany.

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The collapse of civic leadership in smaller metros and the concentration of civic leaders, educated elites in a few large Metros has the effect of increasing or accelerating the decline of smaller metros such as Baltimore, Detroit, St Louis in the US, says Edsall in the NYT. The result is the bureaucratized civic leadership. The need for headquarters locations to have many employees, and the digital revolution have accelerated these changes. Previously leaders in the community took care of their city. As this leadership declined it added to the rapid decline of these smaller metro cities in the US.

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The trillions of dollars in debt taken on by local governments in China acts as a barrier to economic growth. WSJ shows a third of China's cities are struggling to pay the interest on the debt they owe. This will slow growth for years to come.The debt built up during the pandemic as costs of lockdowns and covid testing were borne by cities. Revenues from land sales dropped with the slowdown in construction worsening finances. Wuhan, Dalian and Guangzhou have cut medical benefits because of strained city finances. Teachers in Shenzen are affected by cuts in bonuses a major part of their pay. And in rustbelt parts of the northeast there are impending cuts to heating after power companies failed to get help from the local government.

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About a quarter of renter households in America spend about 50% of income on housing, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.The availability of apartments for rent less than $1000 in the Phoenix region of Arizona is nonexistent says this report in WSJ. It forces renters into apartments that are more expensive than they can afford. Rents are up over 30% in recent years. A temporary loss of job or a medical emergency can lead to back rent accumulating and an eviction notice. Eviction notices are rising in sunbelt cities such as Phoenix, Las Vegas. Also in cities such as Minneapolis and Columbus. Higher rents lead to more evictions as tenants fail to ride it out with a job loss or medical emergency.

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The Burning Glass Institute Tech Cities rankings are based on Cutting Edge Skill workers in the area and on Momentum rankings. Both are shown here in this WSJ report. Seattle Tacoma ranks at the top in the cutting edge skill workers in the US. Cutting edge skills are related to cloud and serverless computing, machine learning, AI architecture and cybersecurity operations. In midsize cities Pro-Urem Utah and Salt Lake City, Ann Arbor Michigan, Rochester New York, Pittsburgh and Kansas City. Seattle has the largest concentration of tech workers about 13% of the US total.