Advancing the scope of site readiness is the next frontier, writes Global Location Strategies Principal and VP of Site Selection Sarah White in an exclusive contribution.
We explore the $45 billion, 9,400-acre urban development project known as Lusail City. Plus: a look at new incentives for AI and tech in Saudi Arabia, and the massive Tasreef Project in Dubai.
Alexis Elmore looks in on homegrown dairy company Fonterra’s multiple investments in New Zealand; a green hydrogen plant from Canada’s Woodland Biofuels in the Bayou State; and a smart manufacturing facility in Mexico from China’s Intretech.
Photo of Samuel Beckett Bridge in Dublin, Ireland: Getty Images
“Countries are not households. Countries must constantly invest, build and modernise. National competitiveness is a function of public investment.” So wrote economist and columnist David McWilliams last week on how to think about the €13 billion (US$14.4 billion) in back taxes Apple was told to pay to Ireland in a Sept. 20th ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The ruling came after legal tussles going back to the original opening of an investigation a decade ago. Has Site Selection reported on the parking of HQs in Ireland? You bet, including:
This piece published the same year the Apple investigation launched
Clustered expertise in microfluidics and mass timber, among other fields, showcases how the state’s higher education institutions will contribute to the semiconductor industry, biomedicine, engineering and forestry, among other fields.
Maria Machin, senior analyst at Econsult Solutions, last week penned a data-supported analysis of zoning’s impact on housing costs. “Addressing the Housing Cost Crisis: Zoning Regulations and their Impact on Affordability in the U.S.” examines the issue through the lens of the Zoning Restrictiveness Index, developed by ESI and the Penn Institute of Urban Research to evaluate zoning codes nationwide and assign numerical values that reflect the degree of restrictiveness in each locality’s regulatory framework.
Follow the Index’s trail and you will land at Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, where you not only will find cogent analysis but access to the project’s entire data sets as well as to the latest eviction data in 10 states and 36 cities the group tracks. Another notable stop is the National Zoning Atlas, which makes use of the National Zoning and Land Use Database. An August report in the Chattanooga Times Free Press examined how zoning and industrial development intersect in looking at ongoing development of Blue Oval City in Tennessee.
Map courtesy of Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Photo by Zachary S. Randall courtesy of Florida Museum of Natural History and NSF
Shared with the public by the National Science Foundation in May, this image is a computed tomography (CT) scan of the skeletal structure of a Syrian spadefoot toad (Pelobates syriacus). “This scan, one of over 15,000 digitized scans created for the openVertabrate (oVert) project, will help scientists track the evolution of similar armor plating in a wide range of fish, amphibians, reptiles and even mammals,” says the Florida Museum of Natural History, where the oVert project continues back by NSF funding.
“Over the next four years, the oVert team will CT scan 20,000 fluid-preserved specimens from U.S. museum collections, producing high-resolution anatomical data for more than 80% of vertebrate genera.”
