Birdwatching is a popular pastime across the globe. Some people take it very seriously, buying expensive gear and traveling all over the world to see rare birds. Most people, though, just have a good pair of binoculars and stay closer to home.
But what if your home is a big city? What birds can you see in a city besides really common ones, like pigeons or crows, that are often pests and boring to watch?
In 1991, researchers at Berkeley Lab invented a triple-glazed window they hoped would revolutionise the building industry. Though windows with three panes had existed for years, what distinguished Berkley’s design from precursors was the presence of a centralised, thin layer of glass. This made the window lighter, as less material could be used to make the external panes. It also made the window more energy efficient, as compartments either side of the central layer could be filled with insulating gas.
Online shopping is skyrocketing. So what are cities going to do about it?
The rising numbers of deliveries are adding to concerns about traffic and pollution in rapidly growing cities around the world. In Europe and Asia, cities have barred deliveries during certain hours, built warehouses to centralise distribution and provided millions in funding to encourage firms to switch to quieter, greener equipment. In the U.S., discussions about how to handle the glut of online shipments were somewhat slower to start, but they're happening now.
The so-called sharing economy has spread to a variety of fields such as cars and homes, and Japan has seen another rising trend in recent years—bicycles.
A growing number of municipalities and private firms are providing bikes to gauge whether such services will catch on.
According to NTT Docomo Inc., which has been teaming up with municipalities to offer a bike-sharing service on an experimental basis, its bicycles were used about 1.8 million times in fiscal 2016, which ended March 31, up from 20,000 in fiscal 2012.
In 2015, 85% of global GDP was generated in cities. Growing cities require substantial investments in infrastructure if they are to continue expanding at their present rate. It’s estimated that we will invest $78 trillion in global infrastructure over the next 10 years alone to accommodate this growth. New York, Beijing, Shanghai and London will need $8 trillion in infrastructure investments alone.
Across Beijing's historic alleyways known as hutongs, construction workers are knocking down local restaurants and bars to make way for new, bigger developments. The historic alleyways are seeing more and more corporate ventures moving in. This is apparently to restore the city to a type of grandeur, but many residents say it is invading their lives and that the "soul" of their community is being lost.
