Spring 2017 Issue
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I enjoyed your article last month on Urban Sprawl in China: The Uses of Pop-Up Cities. McKinsey & Company got it right: mid-sized metropolises are likely to outperform the megacities. I recall happily that McKinsey was intent on protecting the bird habitat during the development of a small city on the outskirts of Shanghai and this sounds like the right kind of thinking too. I am not sure about what you describe as the abandonment of a ‘rural idyll’ - after all this is a country that not so long ago avowed to conquer and change nature and spent a good deal of energy trying to do so. And in recent history there hasn’t been much evidence of China supporting idylls of any kind. MOHAMMED OSMAN (Petaling Jaya, Malaysia) I would suggest that the troubles in the Eurozone are not ‘largely confined to the long-suffering Greece’ (Final Thought in the spring Issue of CFI.co). A clue may be revealed when one considers how youth from the periphery of the EU are flooding into Germany and the United Kingdom to seek employment that their own countries are unable to provide. Of course, this is how it should be in a free labour market but the extent of the migration tells us that things are not at all well at home. The article goes on to talk about a 5.6 percent GDP gap between financial inflows and outflows in the United Kingdom. This may be true of one given period but it should be made clear that the GDP gap dropped from just under 10 percent at the time of the global financial crisis to 2.6% in the year 2016. Remember too that there is freedom of movement of goods within the EU but whereas the Germans and French tend to be more nationalistic consumers, people in the UK are not concerned about the source of their purchases - which partially explains the GDP gap. SUSAN SHAW (Geneva, Switzerland)
Meryl Streep is my hero too and I am pleased to see that you have let your readers know about her generous support of women’s rights. As you point out, she gave her fee for her part in the movie The Iron Lady to promote this cause and has also financed university scholarships. Two years ago, Meryl was cast as Emmeline Pankhurst in Suffragette. Speaking publicly at the time she pointed out that, “We are coming up from the bottom, but it’s that upper echelon that we haven’t broken through.”. She also urged the audience to remember that “women’s issues are men’s problems”. This is so true. JUNE ANDREWS (Los Angeles, US)
Hamburg: Town Hall
Thank you for pointing out that there was never a chance that Geert Wilders (Barbarians at the Gate, spring issue) would emerge as prime minister following the Dutch parliamentary elections in March this year. (Other parties had announced in advance that they would not enter in a coalition with him and his campaign ended in defeat.) My worry is that although the tough words about immigrants from centre-right prime minister Mark Rutte may have stolen some of Wilders’ thunder during the election, it may also lead to further intolerance in the country. DAVID GORDIJN (The Hague, Netherlands)
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