SFU’s Segal Building was packed for yesterday’s public lecture by Jeffrey Tumlin on “Sex, Neuroscience and Walkable Urbanism”. According to Mr Tumlin, we’ve redesigned human habitat to take walking out of our daily lives. Today, typical city policies cause suburban towns to be built, thereby creating absolutely miserable places, causing death (more sprawl meaning higher …

My previous blogpost already mentioned the World Economic Forum’s recently released ”Global Risks Report“. According to this report, cliamte change, the financial crisis and inequality are today’s three biggest risks and together form a multifaceted economic, societal and environmental crisis whose symptoms and challenges are highly interdependent. In the following, I would like to highlight some interesting first insights …

With hurricane Sandy still in our minds, the year began with another catastrophy as a result of climate change: Australia experiences a record heat! It can easily be seen that this is not a usual heat wave as the Australian weather office had to introduce a new colour to show temperature forecasts of more than 54 …

Since my TH!NK2 trip to Copenhagen in 2009, I’ve been a huge fan of this future-minded city. Last year’s lectures by Andreas Røhl and Mikael Colville-Andersen here in Vancouver got me even more excited about the unique bicycle culture and infrastructure of the Danish capital. So, I also very appreciated yesterday’s Oe1 radio programme on “Green Copenhagen – an …

While Austrian politics is becoming more and more of a fake democracy (whether it’s on the military referendum or the Viennese referendum), the Austrian newspaper DER STANDARD leads the way in terms of true participation. For a special issue on direct democracy it asks its readers for their ideas on articles as well as their …

Stock exchanges can be happy: In the latest possible moment (actually, even a bit later), the embarrassing US Fiscal Cliff negotiations came to the anticipated successful and positive ending with a lot of compromise (and a deferral of the problem, as if negotiators would have studies Austrian grand coalition politics). So, as we’ve found a solution to the …

I wish you all happy holidays and a fantastic, green year 2013! Looking forward to an exciting year 2013 in Vancouver and Vienna, with a website relaunch, new blogposts, the Austrian parliamentary elections and much more ahead! Stay tuned, stay green! P.S.: Thanks to the European Greens for their season’s greetings template.