Cities

• [New] As reported by Reuters, the city of Qingdao in China's eastern province of Shandong will test its entire population of more than 9 million for COVID-19 over a five-day period after new cases have been linked to a hospital treating imported infections.
• [New] Urban refugees in cities of the global south are often confined to informal settlements that feature improvised infrastructures at best which might pose particular risks.
• [New] Grade A fully let office space in city centres, and trophy assets in London and other major cities, will remain attractive to foreign and institutional investors.
• [New] Building housing across a range of tenures in the right places, balancing both affordability and quality concerns, will be key as people reassess where they live and remote working potentially opens up new opportunities away from major cities, as we are starting to see in relation to London.
• [New] Designed from the ground up with an operating pure-electric range of 150-200 kms (95-125 miles), the Volta Zero will eliminate an estimated 180,000 tonnes of CO 2 by 2025.
• [New] The ability to pay for parking in Google Maps will be available in 400-plus cities in the US, including Boston, Cincinnati, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, DC, and more.
• [New] Coventry City Council will enter a Joint Venture partnership with Coventry Airport to develop proposals for a gigafactory.
• [New] Coventry City Council will enter a Joint Venture partnership with Coventry Airport Ltd to develop proposals for a Gigafactory at Coventry Airport.
• [New] A joint venture between Coventry council and Regional City Airports will seek outline planning permission by the end of 2021 in the hope of attracting an experienced manufacturer to start production by 2025.
• [New] Coventry City Council has joined forces with the local airport to develop plans for a battery gigafactory which could create up to 4,000 new jobs.
• [New] The Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine will be managed through 30 to 50 key hospitals across urban and rural Australia, because it needs very cold storage.
• [New] If the level of greenhouse gases increase at the current rate, there will be no ice in the Arctic by the end of the century and the sea level would have risen by several feet making many of the coastal cities around India and the world uninhabitable.
• [New] Today some cities in Khuzestan province turned red and at high risk and some cities have also turned orange, which raises the alarm of the fourth wave of coronavirus.
• [New] Aside from the Covid-19 pandemic, air pollution has emerged as the biggest risk factor to health in India, with the country containing 14 of the 20 most polluted cities worldwide.
• [New] The previous blog post observed that the Biden FCC will inherit a two-part broadband challenge: an accessibility gap largely in rural areas, and an adoption gap that is more prevalent in urban areas.
• [New] The near-term impact due to Covid-19 is likely transient and will not substantially alter the purchasing habits of the retail consumer in India.
• [New] Toyota is currently testing autonomous E-Palette shuttles at its sustainable Woven City in the city of Susono in Shizuoka, and says it will aim to offer the electric self-driving shuttles as a service in various markets in the early 2020s.
• Across 12 UK cities, 55% of people from ethnic minority groups, 38% of people at risk of deprivation, 36% of women, and 31% of disabled people who do not currently cycle would like to start 3.
• The developed world will not experience an urbanization process quite like the one in China, which has seen almost half a billion people migrate to its cities over the course of 35 years.
• The ICE exchange announced this week that trading in EU carbon emissions worth a billion euros daily will move from London to the Dutch city during the second quarter.
• Cities above 50,000 in population will receive a direct allocation; cities under 50,000 in population will have their monies allocated through the State of California.
• The City of London is at risk of becoming a ghost town after the number of vacant units hit a five-year high.

Last updated: 21 February 2021