CityLab: The Sounds of Protest Are Getting Louder

Fowkes is the founder of a new project called Protest and Politics—a sound map that documents the sounds of protest, as they grow louder in cities around the world. Indeed, from Brexit to Trump’s election, the past year has known more protests than many before it. [...]

The majority of the sounds that comprise Protest and Politics are from the last decade, but some date back to as early as the first Gulf War, in 1991. Many come from the protests following Trump’s election in the US and Brexit in the U.K., but they also run as far afield as women’s rights protests in Istanbul, and support for Narendra Modi in New Delhi. [...]

The project is part of a larger program Fowkes founded called Cities and Memory—a world map that uses sound to document the lived experience of any given destination. Fowkes, who is a digital consultant and hobby musician based in Oxford, curates each of his projects in his spare time. The majority of his field recordings are volunteer submissions, and the rest he records himself. Since its founding in 2014, hundreds of volunteer collaborators have collected all types of sounds (One project, “The Next Station,” documents the sounds of the London Underground, while another called “Sacred Spaces” collects sounds from churches and temples all over the world. One contributor even mapped the sound of the internet.). [...]

Sound maps have certain strengths that visual maps lack, especially when it comes to documenting cities. Daily life moves quickly—the experience of a place is easily affected by current events, or even just the time of day. Think of the Tokyo fish market, which is alive with splashing and yelling at dawn but settles to a hum by noon. With a sound map, you’re capturing more than the noise of a place—you’re also documenting the way it sounds at a particular point in time.

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Business Insider: China has suddenly stopped buying foreign property

The Chinese pulled 84% of their overseas property investments globally in the first half of 2017 after the government began officially frowning on a "negative list" of foreign investments that were attracting Chinese cash, according to Morgan Stanley.

The Chinese were 25% of buyers of central London commercial property in 2016, a recent note to clients from Morgan Stanley's research team said. [...]

"Over half the investment in the City over the past year has come from Asian investors," Morgan Stanley said, and only 15% comes from the UK. ("The City" refers only to London's financial district.)

In total, Chinese investment in foreign property globally was estimated at $10.6 billion in 2016. Morgan Stanley said it has dropped to $1.7 billion this year, a decline of 84%, and expects it to stay low next year. [...]

In the last few weeks, the China Banking Regulatory Commission began cutting off funding for foreign property investments.

Instead, the government wants investors to pour money into projects associated with its One Belt, One Road project to link China with the West via land. It called investments in property, hotels, cinema, media, and sports clubs “irrational," the Morgan Stanley team reported.

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Quartz: Germany’s diesel scandal shines a light on how cozy the government is with carmakers

Bild newspaper reported on Sunday that Lower Saxony state premier Stephan Weil let Volkswagen edit his 2015 speech to the regional parliament addressing the diesel scandal. After vetting by VW, the speech, hailing VW as a “pearl of German industry,” made it sound like the carmaker didn’t manipulate emissions on purpose. Lower Saxony, Germany’s biggest state, has a 20% stake in VW—and Weil sits on its supervisory board.

No representatives from consumer protection or environmental groups were invited to the summit, provoking criticism that the government’s priority was shielding a lucrative industry, rather than holding it to account. “Maybe this relationship has gotten a little too close,” environment minister Barbara Hendricks said, following news last month that the country’s carmakers allegedly ran a price-fixing cartel for years.

Timo Lange of German non-profit organization LobbyControl notes that it is “embarrassing” that the VW scandal was uncovered by American authorities instead of German ones. Indeed, a glance at the number of auto execs who have made the transition to politics, and vice-versa, suggests a well-oiled revolving door. A few examples: Matthias Wissmann, the transport minister when Angela Merkel was environment minister, has been the president of the German Automotive Industry Association since 2007. Eckart von Klaeden was state secretary in the chancellery (part Angela Merkel’s inner circle after she won power) before becoming head of external relations for Daimler. Thomas Steg was deputy government spokesman for seven years, then joined Volkswagen as its chief lobbyist. Merkel’s campaign manager Joachim Koschnicke used to be Opel’s chief lobbyist.

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Political Geography Now: Map: Which Schengen Borders are Closed to Passport-Free Travel in August 2017?

With the spike in numbers of refugees and other immigrants arriving in Europe in the past two years, many Schengen countries have rushed to control the flow of people by using these special temporary exemptions. When we published our previous map of border controls within Schengen this past February, there were seven member countries reserving the right to perform border checks. Now there's one fewer, and the remaining six have renewed their declarations - perhaps for the last time.

It's important to note that the border controls shown on the map above are the maximum allowed under each country's declaration - actual enforcement may be extensive, limited, or even absent depending on the circumstances.

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MapPorn: High-income countries, World Bank 2015.

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