Before the pandemic, our cities had a simple plan: let population growth drive economic activity. But the world is changing and the perpetual growth mindset has to change with it.
A steel plant.
Photo by Soeren Stache/picture alliance via Getty Images
Our interviews with ex-automotive workers reveal how economic change interrupts lives, casting people into new worlds of precarious work and long, indefinite journeys in search of security.
U.S. solar installations had been rising quickly until the threat of new tariffs darkened the 2022 outlook.
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Only 13% of US solar industry jobs are currently in manufacturing. The Biden administration hopes the sector will grow fast, but that might not be so simple.
Australia can afford to transform Australian manufacturing into an economically viable, environmentally sustainable and job-creating sector. To do that, we need a strategic and long-term approach.
To attain a new health order, African governments need to bolster investment in research and development, innovation and manufacturing of health tools.
The pandemic has engaged ordinary citizens in a way that can only be positive for the future of healthcare.
Tshekiso Tebalo/Xinhua via Getty Images
Supply chain issues, emergency science, social distancing requirements and a lot more free time offered both challenges and opportunities for research scientists.
Local companies in Africa would find it very challenging to be cost-competitive in the longer run when the current worldwide scarcity of COVID-19 vaccines is overcome.
Factory robots could soon acquire a range of skills, including the ability to choose how to make things.
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Custom fabrication involves taking measurements, choosing tools, deciding on sequences of steps and ordering from a menu of materials. AIs under development promise to take humans out of the loop.
Australia’s abundant wind and solar resources mean we’re well placed to produce the hydrogen a green steel industry needs. But there are technical and economic challenges ahead.
Industrialisation was key to long-term economic growth in the west and Asia. After years of going in the wrong direction, new research suggests that many African countries have seen a turnaround.
Face masks are seen in the window of a shop during the COVID-19 pandemic in Montréal in December 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson
Whether it’s health-care workers, kids in school or people running errands, Canadians need face masks during COVID-19. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be made here at home.
Incoming Director of the Australian Institute of Business and Economics at UQ, and Professor of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, Macquarie University