It's all about the Golden Triangle: The U.S., China and India (in this order, although “USIC” makes for a better acronym – and I still prefer “Golden Triangle”). There is some talk about the BRIC countries, stressing that Brazil and Russia should be added to the equation, but this is farcical. Even BRIC protagonists acknowledge the fact that China has a GDP that exceeds the combined GDP of Brazil, Russia and India – and this won't change for the foreseeable future. Frankly, China stan Join discussion...

First come the renovated condominiums, the latte bars and the expensive baby strollers. Next, apparently, come the bloggers. One Web site’s survey of the prevalence of blogs in urban neighborhoods found a link between gentrification and the number of people who feel compelled to think out loud about the changes in their backyards. The site, Outside.in, crowned Clinton Hill in Brooklyn as the most blogged-about neighborhood in America. Join discussion...

Danes are the happiest people in Europe, a survey suggests. But what is the secret of their contentedness? Join discussion...

A study carried out in the early 1990s demonstrated that pedestrians’ speed of walking provides a reliable measure of the pace of life in a city, and that people in fast-moving cities are less likely to help others and have higher rates of coronary heart disease. Using identical methods to those employed in the previous work, the present day research teams discovered that the pace of life is now 10% faster than in the early 1990s. Join discussion...

After this year the majority of people will live in cities. Human history will ever more emphatically become urban history, says John Grimond Join discussion...