The urban renewal that made today's Paris

Haussman was the guy who between 1853-70 led the transformation of beat-up, run down Paris into the city of lights and public spaces that we see today. Public streets and spaces were illuminated at night by gaslights and it became the City of Light. He also gave Paris the radial grid street pattern shown below.

Haussman's Paris Renovation in Under 3 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-_mVRG2IDI

The EU Common Agricultural Policy

The EU's Common Agricultural Policy or CAP is by far the largest expenditure in the EU budget. It is meant to help farmers stay afloat and gives subsidies, but in a different way from US farm subsidies.

How exactly does the Common Agricultural Policy work?
https://multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/en/360-how-exactly-does-the-common-agricultural-policy-work_D004-0003_ev

Padraig Carmody pushing to keep Geography a mandatory subject in Irish schools

Padraig Carmody is a great writer and geographer

Padraig Carmody and Kevin Lynch: ‘More than ever, children need to learn geography’
https://taxviewnews.com/padraig-carmody-and-kevin-lynch-more-than-ever-children-need-to-learn-geography/

Marie Tharp pioneer of ocean cartography

Marie Tharp: Uncovering the Secrets of the Ocean Floor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgfYjS0OTWw

How the end of WW1 led to the start of WW2

Nice 15-min explanation of how the end of WW1 led to the start of WW2

1919-1939: The Treaty of Versailles, the truce that led to another war
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcKAe3SzC5E

Free trade is a problem

How to think about free trade - talk by Julius Krein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NsU4W3poqE


Krein hits a high note on free trade at 28:55

How maps shaped Shakespeare

How maps shaped Shakespeare
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-maps-shaped-shakespeare-180961194/

Middle class workforce being priced out of America's major cities

"Many of the middle- and working-class neigh­borhoods that long have served as the ballast and supplied the work­force for a diverse urban economy are systematically being undermined. Teachers, firemen, and police officers struggle to afford homes in many American cities, according to a study from Trulia. This pricing-out also applies to many skilled blue-collar professions like technicians, construction workers, and mechanics. Inclusive eco­nomic growth is now all too rarely found in American metropolitan areas, and virtually never in the most elite."

The New Shame of Our Cities
by Joel Kotkin
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/05/the-new-shame-of-our-cities/?fbclid=IwAR1Y9aAZipxp0IPZQQWE7aOqoYhA-9nVe9KbG24O1mMwL7hlLWHfpQEeKoo

A Deeper Look at China’s “Going Out” Policy

A Deeper Look at China’s “Going Out” Policy
https://www.cigionline.org/publications/deeper-look-chinas-going-out-policy

"The challenge of political engineering may be far greater than mechanical engineering."

Yes.

by Jing Ye Si
Li Bai, Chinese poet

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/576aa79edd0895f0398b45b6-750-563.png?fbclid=IwAR3WntnBHzL8nZwquO7XRiKa6orAsVB2R008m1wt6BtmS7P3mjLPtfgiE2Y

Greenland's valuable glacial mud

Minerals in the mud of Greeland

https://www.dw.com/en/greenlands-valuable-glacial-mud/av-42227881

Visiting Greenland to study climate change

Cool program for PhD students in Greenland

http://sciencenordic.com/video-understanding-climate-change-greenland

China's war on waste

Great video about the personal side of how China's waste is increasing yet it does not have the facilities to handle it all

China's War on Waste
https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2018/10/china-war-waste-181011063048342.html

Rural migrants evicted from Beijing

Great slice of life of rural migrants who are being evicted from Beijing.

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2018/05/beijing-brutal-evictions-180527093537974.html

Was China's loess plateau every green?

The Loess Plateau today is a dry area of easily-eroded flyaway yellow soil known as loess. It's what makes the Yellow River yellow. Loess dust has blown all the way to Beijing, causing major dust storms.

One solution being tried is massive tree-planting projects, in the hope that roots will grab and stabilize the soil and that the litter from the vegetation will fertilize the soil. However, this study questions whether the Loess Plateau is suited for trees.

New study uproots popular belief in Central China's leafy Loess Plateau

New study of region's ancient vegetation finds grasses have dominated landscape for millennia and calls tree-planting campaigns into question

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1246865/new-study-uproots-popular-belief-leafy-loess-plateau

China's growth

From the section "China's Addiction to US Treasuries" p. 125 in the book The China Boom by Ho-Fun Hung:

How the Made in China era started with rural-to-urban migration:

"The rise of China's export sector was enabled by a series of policy changes in the mid-1990s that precipitated an expanding stream of low-wage rural migrant laborers."


Why China's rise is similar to that of the earlier Asian Tigers:

"Asia's exporters [like Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan] devoted most of their reserves to the purchase of US Treasury bonds, turning themselves into the largest creditors of the United States...

Asia's massive investment in low-yield US Treasury bonds was tantamount to a tribute payment through which Asia's savings were transformed into Americans' consumption power, prolonging US prosperity but creating a financial bubble in the 1980s and beyond. China's export-oriented boom is a continuation and escalation of this market and financial dependence on the United States... In 2008, China surpassed the US as the biggest foreign holder of [US Treasury] bonds."


Hung also has an interesting history of how the US dollar took over global dominance from the British Sterling, and how rivals such as the Euro have tried to compete with the dollar, unsuccessfully.