Ayers Rock in Australia
4 June 2021 | Author/Destination: Australia / Australien | Rubric: General, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time: 13 minutes Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock and officially gazetted as Uluru /Ayers Rock, is a large sandstone rock formation in the southern part of the Northern Territory in Australia. It lies 335 km (208 mi) south west of the nearest large town, Alice Springs. Uluru is sacred to the Pitjantjatjara, the Aboriginal people of the area, known as the Aṉangu. The area around the formation is home to an abundance of springs, waterholes, rock caves and ancient paintings. Uluru is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Uluru and Kata Tjuta, also known as the Olgas, are the two major features of the Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park (Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology and The Dreaming). Uluru is one of Australia’s most recognisable natural landmarks and has been a popular destination for tourists since the late 1930s. It is also one of the most important indigenous sites in Australia. read more…Raine Island National Park in Queensland
27 March 2021 | Author/Destination: Australia / Australien | Rubric: General, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time: 10 minutes Raine Island is a vegetated coral cay 32 hectares (79 acres) in total area situated on the outer edges of the Great Barrier Reef off north-eastern Australia. It lies approximately 620 km (390 mi) north-northwest of Cairns in Queensland, about 120 kilometres (75 mi) east-north-east of Cape Grenville on the Cape York Peninsula. Raine Island is the site of the oldest European structure in tropical Australia, a stone beacon built in 1844, and harbours the world’s largest remaining population of green turtles. An important environmental icon, the island is totally protected from public access. It got its name from Captain Thomas Raine (1793–1860), the English mariner who discovered it. Raine Island is a vegetated coral cay dominated by low herbaceous annual vegetation (Batianoff et al. 1993). The cay is composed of a central core of phosphate rock surrounded by sand and extensive fringing reefs. It lies just off the eastern edge of the continental shelf, next to a shipping channel known as the Raine Island Entrance and Pandora entrance. The entrance allows shipping to enter the water of the Great Barrier Reef. read more…Sydney Road in Melbourne
14 February 2020 | Author/Destination: Australia / Australien | Rubric: General, Shopping Reading Time: 9 minutes Sydney Road (in its northernmost part also known as the Hume Highway) is a major urban arterial in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Sydney Road starts at the northern end of Royal Parade at the boundary of Parkville and Brunswick and continues north through Brunswick, Coburg, Coburg North, Hadfield, Fawkner, Campbellfield, Somerton and Craigieburn, where it joins the Hume Freeway. The section passing through Brunswick and Coburg, between Park Street at its southern end and Bell Street near the site of the former Pentridge prison, at its northern end, is Melbourne’s longest continuous shopping strip, with an abundance of small businesses and a variety of restaurants and coffee shops, clothing stores, places of worship, and community services. It is well known for its wedding fashion shops, discount shopping and a number of specialist food stores. read more…The European Union: Real Estate and Demography
25 May 2019 | Author/Destination: Knut Wingsch | Rubric: General, Architecture, Editorial, EU blog post series, European Union, Living, Working, Building Reading Time: 467 minutes(Latest update: 22 August 2022) First, there is not THE real estate market – not national and certainly not international. In fact, the market situation is very fragmented due to the general conditions, in other words, many individual markets, collectively referred to as “the market”. Metropolitan Area A faces different challenges than Metropolitan Area B and Metropolitan Area C can not even understand what A and B are talking about. Where there is comparability, is the housing situation in the “affordable segment” in urban centers in all western EU states, the US and Canada. This is where the call for the state, which should intervene regulatively, quickly becomes louder. In free market economies, however, this is on the one hand not wanted and therefore on the other hand, only limited possible. That’s pretty okay, because the market is inherently profit-oriented and that’s just what it will stay, otherwise investment incentives for new construction would sooner or later be completely absent. The “rental price brake” (Mietpreisbremse) exemplifies the problem. At the same time, more and more social housing is being let out of the rental price brake without replacement investment being made. In the following, single aspects are examined in more detail using the example of Germany, whereby the scenarios also apply to other western countries such as the EU states, the US, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, but also, e.g., to Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul in South Korea, Tel Aviv in Israel and other emerging metropolitan regions around the world. read more…