benjhm

This is not futurology, it's the past, it was called Concord, and wasted loads of fuel and money, we don't need that again.

It makes sense - a country with plenty of space and natural resources, a mild climate (relatively, looking forwards), innovative engineering skills, new potential from connections to europe, should be encouraging immigration, but 4.5m implies a lot more than just return of refugees, and east europe had westwards emigration in recent decades, so from where are these new arrivals going to come - turkey, africa, south asia ? Archaeologists suggest that ancestors of many eurasians spread out from the pontic steppe - time to come back ?

Thanks for this link - plots fit my expectations, very useful to quantify such correlation factors. However the examples are only for 'developed' countries - would be interesting to see similar for rest of the world. How are the trends in African cities, for example ? Maybe indoor living space (for kids to play) is more important in cold climates (or when there are too many cars on streets! ) ?

I live in a village, popn ±2000, within 10 mins walk we have two schools, supermarket, railway station, music academy, dance hall, sports facilities, and within 15 mins by e-bike (next villages) a hospital, commune admin services, more shops etc. It helps that services cluster along the river valley, but the e-bike helps a lot to climb up the side.
In much of the world population is no longer rising, so we shouldn't just assume growing cities, rather provide better services near to existing housing stock - much of that is rural.

Only 4% in 40 years, that's just a Sverdrup in the ocean... (±1.2Sv)... but wait, just how big is a sverdrup ...?
It's good they keep measuring such things regularly over a long time. However the implication is not yet obvious - as people confuse the subtropical gulf stream off florida - mainly driven by the spin of the earth (not changing) - with its branch that turns off up the north atlantic, pulled by sinking cold salty water at the ice-edge (which is changing) - it's the latter which is fundamental to the carbon cycle as well as the climate of NW europe.

Thanks for posting this, many of us appreciate active communities on slrpnk.net, without seeing where it originated. Noting the "hopeful vs panic" issue, we shouldn't waste our energy disputing "optimistic" or "pessimistic" visions - both are useful to help people to think, what's important is to reject "fatalistic" thought.

About the art we see on slrpnk.net, it seems to me most of the buildings tend large, and like those of an architect selling grand projects, rather than buildings crafted by individuals on a smaller scale - is that intentional ?

Regarding the global warming goals, indeed 2.3 - while not good enough to avoid many critical impacts - is still better than 3 or 4, so we have made progress bending the projection curves since these began in 1990s. Having a long experience of such scenarios I'm trying to make an interactive tool to help illustrate such changes.

Thanks for this link. It explains well, for example how they mixed state propaganda into practical local info relating to schools housing shopping etc., including targeted advertising on social media especially Telegram, and shifting from covid to constitution to fake news about Ukraine. Of course, such methods work around the world. What's the antidote?

I recall a presentation by a key guy in China's planning system (NDRC-ERI) - it was clear that their plan all along was for the peak construction to coincide with the peak working-age population - which is why they would never concede to reduce emissions earlier. They had a long-term view including demographics (more than most governments consider), but the process got its own momentum and became the bubble - also related to city-government financing incentives as well as risky tycoons. Now the problem with such over-planning is that the next generation may not thank them for the legacy of this type of construction (and CO~2~), and prefer to live in smaller houses or away from the coast (as Shanghai, Tianjin, etc. will be flooded due to same CO~2~), hence as you say even more reconstruction (and more CO~2~). But the peak has passed, what really matters next is whether India will repeat similar mistakes.

I've traveled outside city centres, but neither to commuter towns nor beach resorts, so I'll believe you and get there is systemic imbalance.
I have lived six months in China, and literally cried when I cycled around new developments and saw the width of the concrete they were laying for roads. That was Shandong - quite similar landscape and climate to Portugal. Their planning is not all crazy, they also preserved some city centres, build metros, and maybe those roads allow potential space for trams or bicycles, but now it's mostly many lanes of cars, lost the human-scale markets, and I doubt most tower blocks are energy-efficient (anybody know?).
Some people like 'modern' concrete lifestyle, the problem is the scale of such construction, and no choice of alternative styles of development (in cities like Glasgow where such construction was a fashion decades ago, now they are demolishing towers due to social failures). Also, many graduates in China have poor job or housing security, there has also been mass over-production of degrees.
(p.s. now I'm in northern europe in a 1930s house, it's very cold in winter as can't afford good heating, even with PhD, will get out woolly hats and electric jacket to keep coding at computer ... but at least every house is different here, scope to adapt).

This is important, not least because making the cement and steel for these surplus apartments and associated road infrastructure makes an enormous contribution to global CO~2~ emissions. Look at how the emissions took off after 2005. So the sooner the bubble bursts, the better for the climate.

Portugal has preserved beautiful human-scale cities and villages, while most apartments in China are in concrete jungles of tower blocks - you really want to swap one for the other? Sure, solutions are needed, but not like that. Also the chinese housing bubble conned many ordinary people to invest multi-family life-savings, it's not a 1% thing.

Including Circassian genocide in mid 19th century. Some people in North Caucasus (also in Turkey, which received survivors) still try to keep this memory alive. If Kerch bridge survives, maybe one day it could help link Crimea and Circassia. But how far should we go back in history - what about Genghis Khan? The Mongol empire split Kievan Rus - Ivan Grozni would have argued he was fighting back. Now it's 21st century we need general agreement not to make any empires great again.