July, 2016

The end of traditional, brick and mortar retail has regularly been proclaimed. The seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of online retail, more convenient than ever since the advent of smartphones, tablets and the internet of things, is supposedly driving the last few nails into the coffin of our cities’ shopping streets, malls and out-of-town retail parks. Oliver Samwer, serial eCommerce entrepreneur and co-founder of Rocket Internet, even claimed: “Shops are medieval. People …

Suburban flight has become a big deal in Germany over the last few weeks. A comprehensive new study has just been published, the Postbank Housing Atlas 2016. The study presents a range of findings, including details of the link between city-centre housing prices and the number of workers commuting into and out of a city. Postbank identifies Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Stuttgart as the German cities with the highest numbers of workers who …

On 24 June 2016, the world woke to the shock result of the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum. Turnout was historically high, at 71.8%, and more than 30 million people voted. At 52% – 48% in favour of leaving the European Union, the Brexit majority is far too slim to create any long-lasting stability. A range of forecasts in the run-up to the referendum attempted to predict the fallout of a …