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Million Cities
April 18, 2008For the first time in human history, one half of the world’s population will be urban. The United Nations division of population predicted that sometime in the year 2006 this historical change will take place and the human race, which started out as collectors and hunters, will turn into...
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Wannabe Nation States
April 18, 2008In 1986 there were 159 countries in the United Nations, today there are 191, thanks mainly to the breakup of federations in Europe plus the adhesion of microstates like Liechtenstein, Micronesia and Tuvalu. Yet, worldwide there are more than 200 unrecognized regions and people which carry the seed of...
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Viva Las Vegas
April 18, 2008Las Vegas was founded on May 15, 1905, when 110 acres of desert were auctioned off in a single day. In the following 20 years the city essentially thrived because of the railroad. In 1931, three events occurred in the State of Nevada that would forever change the face...
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You shall be urban
April 18, 2008The definition of an urban population varies widely from country to country. Of the 228 countries for which the United Nations compiles data, roughly half use administrative considerations, 51 distinguish urban populations based on the size or density, 39 rely on functional characteristics, 22 have no definition of ‘urban’...
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Opus Dei
April 18, 2008Religion and politics have always been dangerous bedfellows. As far apart as the EU and US seem to be in terms geo-politics, there is one common thread in their political agendas: the secularisation of Islamic countries.
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The History of Expos
October 01, 2007World’s fairs are an offspring of the age of industrialization in Europe, with its initial focus rather on innovative products than on magnificent architecture of pavilions and convention halls. The155 years of World’s Fairs can be clearly divided in two periods, the Industrial Revolution and the Digital Revolution, with the...
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Refugee Camps
May 01, 2007Of the worldwide 33 million people that are currently uprooted from their homes, 12 million are refugees and asylum seekers living in camps in countries other than their own.Sudden crises like the most recent one in the Sudanese region of Darfur where more than 5.3 million people left their homes...
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Selfmade Biodiversity
March 01, 2007In the year 2004 scientist published an estimation that through the warming up of the earth’s atmosphere 15 to 37 percent of our current species will be exterminated by the year 2050. While this rapid decrease of species is stated, the human beings as main source of this process, are...