Chinas New Age

Today´s media is full of news about China. On the one hand Economists get really excited when they talk about this topic as China sustained a GDP growth rate of about 10 % over a period of almost 30 years.

But on the other hand there is a lot of criticism on the political decisions made in China. Western media were reporting furiously on the repressive politics in Tibet, Liu Xiaobo and Ai Weiwei are well known all over the world as a heroes suppressed by a violent regime.

But there is another tendency that has not drawn as much attention as the others have. Despite having the biggest CO2 emissions in the word even before the US since 2007 China is initiating a wide range of impressing projects that point clearly towards a more sustainable and ecological future.

In this article I will explore different ideas to change China, the mobility of its people and their way of life. I want to find out what topics are being debated by the people who are working on that process and what problems are currently faced.

Visioning future Metropolis

 Innovative Public Transport Systems

In the 21 century an increasing world population, the scarcity of natural resources, and global warming will be great challenges to humanity as we have to find a way to solve those problems. Contrary to the expectations that entering the information age, people would move back from the big cities to the country, there are currently 50% of the world population living in cities, 2050 it will be around 70%. Furthermore the so called mega cities are growing steadily and more and more are reaching 20 million inhabitants. In those urban areas the demand for clean fast public transport has increased drastically. People who do not own a car need to be moved fast and efficiently from one part of the city to another without losing too much time.

As a consequence one could say that public transport systems are the future, while the automobile is an anachronistic model that cannot be adopted by 9 billion people living on this earth without destroying the planet due to excess carbon dioxide emissions. The more cars there are the more traffic and traffic jams there will be which are time-consuming and make mobility and flexibility in large cities impossible.

Innovative public transport systems will become more and more important. I will explore the visions and points of views of experts in the field and find out what could be helpful and what seems to be a mere utopia.

Monetizing news online

As writing a blog seems to be a concept of having a conversation with your readers about a specific topic, rather than being a one sided process “I speak you listen”, I will respond on the inspiring comments and the constructive critique I received.

Why online newspapers struggle funding and what could be done about it

In my last week’s post I said that online dating is nowadays the most profitable subscription business on the web.
While researching more on how free online offers finance themselves in contrast to the money charging subsription businesses I stumbled across some interesting articles. I read this inspiring blog which discusses the shift towards free online newspaper sites and their struggle to earn revenues.