What we learned this week

Milan’s vertical forest tower is one of my favourite buildings of recent years, so it’s good to see work begin on Stefano Boeri’s new forest city in China.
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Peter MacFadyen of Flatpack Democracy talks to the Upstream Podcast. Lots of interesting ideas about the value of independent politics.
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Plenty of governments are trying to get their heads around driverless cars and the legal structures for them, but India’s transport minister has decided to ban them. “We won’t allow any technology that takes away jobs” he says.
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Can multinational corporations succeed where governments have failed on climate change? ask Jerry Patchell and Roger Hayter in Foreign Affairs magazine.
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I’m on holiday this week and next, so I’ve been reading some things I wouldn’t normally get round to. I read Coffin Road, by Peter May, on the in-laws recommendation. A fast-paced thriller with memory loss, plotting corporations and an environmental crisis at the heart of it that I can’t be any more specific about without spoiling it. I also read Andrew Smith’s fascinating Moondust, where he tracks down and interviews the men who have walked on the moon (nine at the time, down to six today) and asks how we should re-appraise the Apollo project with the benefit of hindsight.