The inner city has always been a site of change and innovation. In times of COVID-19, the inner city has an opportunity to exploit its strengths – with digital retail concepts, innovative mobility solutions, and pragmatic site usage. The Fraunhofer IAO researchers see the inner city of the future as an innovation lab for developing and testing new concepts.
Freedom, private property, competition, and the rule of law proved to be more successful than an all-controlling bureaucracy. In a way, the division of Germany constituted a large-scale real-world test for the long-term effects of free markets vs. a centrally planned economy.
The startup ecosystem and its impact on Germany´s innovative culture and its economic success are important research and policy areas. FNF and the Bundesverband Deutsche Startups e.V. collaborated to create the Migrant Founders Monitor 2021, which looks at the role of migrant founders in the German ecosystem.
So far, the COVID-19 pandemic has had little effect on the German housing market. It has left barely a mark on real estate prices or rentals. But the pandemic is not over yet, and even if it was: the past months have triggered some developments that will transform our working world and are likely to have a considerable impact on the housing market in the long term.
In recent months, many countries have introduced enormous stimulus packages to help their economies overcome the devastation caused by the COVID-19 crisis. In Germany, the government made available emergency funds, created sector-specific relief programmes, and implemented demand stimulus measures such as a temporary reduction in the sales tax rate.
After having spent more than two hundred pages on Kantian philosophy, Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, and a number of obscure German Pietists, Jennifer A. Herdt hurls the reader of her newest book back into a seemingly very different present.
Berlin’s recently introduced rent control policy is Germany’s single most stringent rent regulation tool. The law prohibits any rental increases for a period of five years. In the case of new rentals, the rent a landlord is allowed to charge is determined by fixed reference values based on the age and fittings of the unit in question.
The legacy of Bader Ginsburg, who was nominated to a seat on the DC circuit appeals court by Jimmy Carter in 1980 and finally nominated for the Supreme Court by Bill Clinton in 1993, is the social equality of women, LGBTIQ and other minorities. She fought for an open America that finds its strength in diversity.
The transfer of data from the EU to the US violates the right to privacy as well as European data protection laws because data are not sufficiently protected against interception by US agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA) or the FBI.
In June 2020, the German cabinet introduced a regulation banning certain single-use products made of plastic; the European Union had already introduced a similar regulation in May 2019. In future, the sale of products such as throwaway plastic cutlery, plates, straws and cotton buds will be prohibited.
