Geography

TOKYO – The weather here is turning warmer, the cherry trees are blossoming and the waiting rooms in clinics that specialize in nose and eye problems are filling up with people suffering from runny noses, sneezing and bloodshot eyes.

Tokyo is known for many things: the Imperial Palace gardens, cherry trees in the springtime, super-crowded commuter trains. But it has a more dubious distinction. It is also the world capital for allergies, especially for hay fever, known to the Japanese as pollen sickness.  read more »

In a piece called The Beauty of Urban Planning from Space, the Sustainable Cities Collective highlights views from space of uniquely designed street pattern designs in various cities around the world. There are ten examples that illustrate the zenith of urban planning.

As attractive as the street patterns are, they highlight the inevitable inability of designers, or anyone else for that matter, to influence much more than small changes in the overall urban form.  read more »

No decade in history has experienced such an increase in urban population as the last. From Tokyo-Yokohama, the world's largest urban area (population: 37 million) to Godegård, Sweden, which may be the smallest (population: 200), urban areas added 700 million people between 2000 and 2010.  read more »

This is the story of how elites prospered while killing the singular trend that built America, and all that you proles got in return was a dysfunctional housing market. In a reversal of more than 100 years of American history, the unique force that built the United States and the wealth of its inhabitants – geographic convergence – has been stopped.  read more »

Have you ever tried to visit a South Pacific island near New Caledonia called Sandy Island? A team of Australian scientists attempted just that and found no sign of the supposedly sizeable landmass. Instead, the team from the University of Sydney were greeted by open ocean and nothing more.  read more »