- An MP singing the praises of tax havens… care to guess which constituency he represents? The City of London of course. Shame on you Mark Field.
- Would you live on an eco-estate built by Ikea, currently underway in East London?
- The financial crisis has many victims, but the economics profession is not among them. So it was heartening to see a walkout of Harvard’s introductory economics class this week – the professor is the author of one of the best-selling college economics textbooks.
- The Settlers of Catan boardgame, of which I’m a fan, has released an educational oil scenario for download – an ingenious way of exploring pollution, peak oil and the resource curse.
I was interested in the eco-estate up until it said:
“Cars will be parked underground”
No, sorry, a real eco estate, as seen in places like Vauban in Freiburg and several other places, is car free, with premium prices on car parking.
Indeed, but in the UK, those few projects brave enough to build without car parking have failed… We need a integrated transport systems as well as new estates, and until we’ve learned those lessons from the continent, I suspect we’ll be getting these half-hearted eco-estates instead.