More Than Half of Canadians Say Religion is Harmful.

Just over half of Canadian respondents say they believe religion does more harm than good in the world, according to a new survey.

According to a new poll from Ipsos, conducted for Global News, more than half of Canadians believe religion does more harm than good.

The Ipsos poll, conducted for Global News, showed that 51 per cent of respondents agreed with the above statement.

[Vice-president of Ipsos Affairs Sean] Simpson explained that the number is rising; when Ipsos asked the same question in 2011, 44 per cent of respondents agreed.

And among Canadians, it’s people in Quebec who really look down upon religion.

Compared to the rest of Canada, Quebecers are significantly more likely than residents of other provinces to feel religion does more harm than good (62 per cent). They’re also more inclined (18 per cent) to lose respect for people when they find out they are religious.

Only a quarter of Canadians (24%) said they believe religion makes you a better person, while only a third (34%) believed religion and politics should mix.

Dammit, Canada! Stop making your neighbors to the South look bad all the time! We get it. You win again. You don’t have to keep rubbing it in.

Local councils making cities less liveable, independent infrastructure adviser says

Australia's patchwork of small local councils is threatening urban liveability, according to the independent infrastructure adviser.

Infrastructure Australia has encouraged the Federal Government to reward states with money if they can simplify planning processes, in a 134-page report released on Friday.

The Future Cities research found "the large number of small local councils in many of our major cities has resulted in cases of fragmented governance, and disjointed infrastructure and service delivery".


CEO Philip Davies identified the Greater Sydney Commission — which has responsibility for city-wide planning — and the Brisbane City Council,
the largest council in the southern hemisphere, as arrangements allowing for better long-term infrastructure planning.

"We've got four of the world's top 10 most-liveable cities in Australia," he said.

"However we also know that if we don't get the planning right, we won't have the most liveable cities."

The report predicted what Sydney and Melbourne would look like in the 2040s under low, medium and high-density development.

It concluded the low density scenario — the likely outcome from an unplanned or uncoordinated approach — made both cities less liveable, with strain on infrastructure and poorer access to services.

Council crunch already underway
Former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett cut the number of council areas in his state by almost two thirds in the 1990s.

Similar attempts have been made elsewhere since then, most recently in Western Australia and New South Wales, but both were aborted before they were completed.

The Federal Government is already rolling out "city deals" which bring local, state and federal governments together in exchange for federal infrastructure investment in Townsville, Launceston, Darwin, Hobart and Geelong.


Local planning reform has been announced as part of the Hobart deal, but such an arrangement had been discussed by Hobart councils prior to the federal offer.

Infrastructure Australia argues the Federal Government needs to introduce a scheme where funding is given in exchange for streamlined planning.

"All the Federal Government has as a lever is money, and then it needs to back that up with help in getting the right policies in place," Mr Davies said.

Eamon Waterford, acting CEO of independent group Committee for Sydney, said "there's always going to be tension between different levels of government" but he believed the Greater Sydney Commission was working.

"Local government does a really good job but they're not resourced or expected to look at the bigger issues about where a train line goes, or where a new freeway goes, or where a new hospital goes, although they have huge implications for their area," he said.

Genes remain active after death.

Cells continue to function even after an individual dies.

That is according to a scientific study published in Nature Communications.

Analysing post-mortem samples, an international team of scientists showed that some genes became more active after death.

As well as providing an important dataset for other scientists, they also hope that this can be developed into a forensic tool.

Inside the cells of  bodies, life plays out under the powerful influence of our genes; their outputs controlled by a range of internal and external triggers.

Understanding gene activity provides a perfect insight into what an individual cell, tissue or organ is doing, in health and in disease.

Genes are locked away in the DNA present in our cells and when these are switched on, a tell-tale molecule called an RNA transcript is made.

Some of the RNA directly controls processes that go on in the cell, but most of the RNA becomes the blueprint for proteins.

It's the RNA transcripts that scientists often measure when they want to know what's going on in our cells, and we call this analysis transcriptomics.

Inner workings

But obtaining samples for study is not an easy thing.

Blood is relatively easy to get, but lopping off an arm or sticking a needle into a living person's heart or liver is no trivial undertaking.

So, scientists rely on a relatively abundant source of samples - tissues and organs removed after death.

Whilst studies of post-mortem samples can provide important insights into the body's inner workings, it isn't clear if these samples truly represent what goes on during life.

The other confounding factor is that samples are rarely taken immediately after death, instead a body is stored until post-mortem examination and sampling can take place and its impact is unclear.

And it's this reliance on stored post-mortem samples that concerned Prof Roderic Guigó, a computational biologist based at the Barcelona Institute for Science and Technology and his team.

"You would expect that with the death of the individual, there would be a decay in the activity of the genes," he explained.

And this decay might affect proper interpretation of transcriptomics data.

Post-death throes

To see if this was the case the team used next generation mRNA sequencing on post-mortem specimens collected within 24 hours of death and on a subset of blood samples collected from some of the patients before death and, as Prof Guigó explained, what they discovered was surprising:

"There is a reaction by the cells to the death of the individual. We see some pathways, some genes, that are activated and this means that sometime after death there is still some activity at the level of transcription," he said.

Although the exact reason the genes remained active was unclear, Prof Guigó does have one possible explanation: "I would guess that one of the major changes is due to the cessation of flow of blood, therefore I would say probably the main environmental change is hypoxia, the lack of oxygen, but I don't have the proof for this."

What the study did provide was a set of predictions of post-death RNA level changes for a variety of commonly studied tissues against which future transcriptomic analyses could be calibrated.

And the understanding of the changes in RNA levels that occur after death might also be pivotal in future criminal investigations.

"We conclude there is a signature or a fingerprint in the pattern of gene expression after death that could eventually be used in forensic science, but we don't pretend we have now a method that can be used in the field," said Prof Guigó.

Whilst the data was consistent across different cadavers, and accurate predictions of time since death could be estimated from the RNA levels, Prof Guigó explained that extra work would be needed before its application in forensics could become a reality:

"It requires further investigation, longer post-mortem intervals, not only 24 hours, the age of the individual, the cause of death - all of these will need to be taken into account if we are to convert this into a useful tool."

Crypto-currency craze 'hinders search for alien life'

Scientists listening out for broadcasts by extra-terrestrials are struggling to get the computer hardware they need, thanks to the crypto-currency mining craze, a radio-astronomer has said.

Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) wants to expand operations at two observatories.

However, it has found that key computer chips are in short supply.

"We'd like to use the latest GPUs [graphics processing units]... and we can't get 'em," said Dan Werthimer.

Demand for GPUs has soared recently thanks to crypto-currency mining.

"That's limiting our search for extra-terrestrials, to try to answer the question, 'Are we alone? Is there anybody out there?'," Dr Werthimer told the BBC.

"This is a new problem, it's only happened on orders we've been trying to make in the last couple of months."

Mining a currency such as Bitcoin or Ethereum involves connecting computers to a global network and using them to solve complex mathematical puzzles.

This forms part of the process of validating transactions made by people who use the currency.

As a reward for this work, the miners receive a small crypto-currency payment, making it potentially profitable.

GPUs are high-performance chips and aren't just used for powering video games - they may be stacked together by Bitcoin miners, radio-astronomers or others interested in processing large amounts of data for certain applications.

"At Seti we want to look at as many frequency channels as we possibly can because we don't know what frequency ET will be broadcasting on and we want to look for lots of different signal types - is it AM or FM, what communication are they using?" explained Dr Werthimer, who is chief scientist at the Berkeley Seti Research Center.

"That takes a lot of computing power."

He added that at some telescopes, Seti has around 100 GPUs crunching data from large listening arrays.

These arrays can pick up the faintest of radio frequencies that have been flung across our solar system from elsewhere in the universe - often from natural phenomena such as collapsing stars.

Seti is currently trying to improve its capacity for analysing such data at two observatories - Green Bank in West Virginia and Parkes in Australia.

But the institute has been hit by the GPU shortage.

"We've got the money, we've contacted the vendors, and they say, 'we just don't have them'," said Dr Werthimer.

Earlier this year, there were reports that video gamers had been hit by a sudden rise in the cost of GPUs, thanks in particular to a rise in Ethereum mining, which can be done with chips aimed at consumers.

At the time, major chip-maker Nvidia said that retailers should make arrangements to make sure gamers' demands were met.

Star search

Other radio-astronomers have been affected.

A group looking for evidence of the earliest stars in the universe was recently shocked to see that the cost of the GPUs it wanted had doubled.

"We're in the process of expanding our telescope - we got a grant from the National Science Foundation here in the United States to do so," said Aaron Parsons at the University of California at Berkeley.

Prof Parsons' radio telescope array, the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionisation Array (Hera) project, is an American, British and South African venture located in South Africa's western plains.

It has been designed to listen to low frequency radio waves emitted by the reionising hydrogen gas that permeated the universe before the first stars and galaxies formed.

GPUs are needed in order to bring together data from Hera's many small radio telescopes - this synthesises a much larger array, offering an especially wide field of view peering out into the universe.

Three months ago, the Hera team had budgeted for a set of GPUs that cost around $500 ($360) - the price has since doubled to $1,000.

"We'll be able to weather it but it is coming out of our contingency budget." added Prof Parsons.

"We're buying a lot of these things, it's going to end up costing about $32,000 extra."

He also said he was concerned that future work could even be stopped in its tracks, should the GPU shortage worsen.

Mining's meteoric rise

Thanks in part to a recent boom in the price of crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, mining crypto-currencies has never been more popular.

While Bitcoin miners have largely moved on to specialised "Asic" chips that have been designed from scratch to support mining, it's still possible to use GPUs on the Ethereum mining network to lucrative ends, according to cyber-security expert Matthew Hickey at Hacker House.

"[You can] use GPUs effectively to turn a small profit, you're not going to make millions but if you put 12 or 24 GPUs together, you'll make back the cost in six months," he told the BBC.

GPUs are versatile, he added, pointing out that cyber-security experts sometimes use them for password-cracking experiments, in which computers make many millions of attempts at breaking into a system.

But Mr Hickey has also noticed that GPUs are now being sold on sites such as Ebay at inflated prices.

"It's becoming increasingly difficult to find suppliers and cards," he said.

Eiffel Tower closes as snow blankets Paris and northern France.

The Eiffel Tower turned away tourists on Tuesday as snow swept across northern France, causing traffic chaos in Paris during the French capital’s first real dose of wintry weather this season.

The Meteo France weather service put the greater Paris region on alert for snow and black ice on roads, among 27 departments it expected to be on alert across the country until midday Wednesday.

The weather caused major gridlock across the city, with more than 700km (430 miles) of traffic jams recorded at 7.30pm local time (1830 GMT) on Tuesday, local information service Sytadin said.

Paris bus services were cancelled on Tuesday evening, according to the RATP transport authority, and school transport would not run on Wednesday in several areas.

Meteo France says the snowfall will intensify overnight Wednesday, with temperatures expected to fall as low as minus 10C (14F), leaving 5-10cm (two to four inches) in most areas on alert.

Snow had already dusted Paris on Monday before quickly melting away.

“This will be the first blast of winter, late but the real thing, with cold air from Scandinavia colliding with a perturbation coming up from the south,” said forecaster Sebastien Leas.

Rail operator SNCF had to slow down trains on several of its high-speed TGV lines, with service disrupted across much of northern France.

Thousands of emergency accommodation spaces will be opened to shelter homeless people, the country’s territorial cohesion ministry said.

In the Paris region, traffic was banned for vehicles weighing over 7.5 tonnes, which were told to bypass the area by police, who also advised locals limit road trips.

On Tuesday night in the southern Paris suburb of Essonne, many truck drivers forced to stop on the road were preparing to spend the night.

“We have been stuck since 4.30pm. We are cold, we have no food or toilet. I do not know when I will be able to leave,” one truck driver, Mehdi Benomar, told AFP.

The cold snap marks a sharp contrast from the weeks of mild and rainy weather across northern France in recent weeks, prompting flooding in several areas and pushing the Seine river to more than four metres above its normal levels as it flows through the capital.

Caroline Wozniacki defeated Samona Helip to win the title of Grand Grand Salem

Denmark's Caroline Minerie Becky defeated Romanian Sima's Helip to win the title of her first grandmother Salem and won the number one rating in the Australian Open.

The second seed won 7-6 (7-2) 3-6 6-4 in the 43th effort.

Nine years later, and after 17 months, he was able to overcome the dean after the 74rd classification.

Wozniacki said, "I dreamed for many years since that moment, and today the dream of staying here is true."

The victory means that 27-year-old ages will change the number of humps to World Rankings on Monday.

One runner in the U.S. Open, Wininsney Becky becomes the first dean to win the title of Grand Slam singles.

Helip also was hoping to finish waiting for the first major title to include a number of her, but now she has lost in the Australian Open Final as well as two French Open.

"I'm really sad but Caroline was better than me," he said.

"I fight and walk for so many years, so hopefully another challenge will face today."


Wozniacki takes Grand Slam opportunity

The humidity got to both players with Halep struggling in the second set

Final final may start in 19:30 local time but conditions were neutral, with temperatures at night above 30C and humidity cruises.

Both the women supported the test points in the final, on the way to save the match points, and sometimes the opportunity to remove the grading final set.

Ministers Becky picked up the open-up opener in the basket, 4-1 lip slip and after helping to spread the problem in trouble when he needed treatment from Dr. Medal through the second set.

However, after taking their blood pressure, Romania returned to take three of the four next games, taking one with a Fondandand winner.

He was in the influence of heat rule, or the player wanted to use it, and Helip took an opportunity to stop the action for 10 minutes and the finalist allowed the court to look for air conditioning.

The Holap had now spent more than 13 hours during the tournament, while Vodnazaki - who saved two match points against Jinna Ft in round two - up to 12 hours.

The final set was a great test of mind and body, and he developed some great tennis.

After serving twice after breaking, Viszoni Becky left another Grand Slam when she broke out in 4-3 in judgment and needed to treat knee injury.

Instead, Wozniacki was the one who caught the moment, to play excellent in the final three games.


While serving with the hack now in the competition, Wozniacki's supremendous defense capabilities forced a mistake on the match point, leaving Dan out and stuck on the Road Laurea Arena court.

Match data

Vazni Beki's way for the title

Australia Open: Roger Federer retired Hainan Cheng by the final.

Roger Federer won 20 major singles and sixth eight Australian Opens, when he defeated his opposing Hunen Chen on Friday night semi-final after promoting the fight.

Federer led 6-1, 5-2 on the Road Laureate Arena, when he was removed from a terrace on his left foot before his decision to retire, in a tour of the remote Laureau Arena. Men's championships will meet World No. Six Maren Kaf in the final of the final.

The feeder, who was stuck at a sudden stop, said, "I have stood up with the roofs in the past and it is very painful."

"In a few minutes, it's too high and you can not take it further, when you think there's no way you can get back and make things really worse.

"It's better to stop. So it feels bittersweet.

"Obviously, I'm in the finest incredibly happier, but they do not like it, and they've played a wonderful tournament, so today's credit for them to try harder."

36-year-old Sweiss defeated the clinic for claiming her 19th position in the second generation in Melbourne, last year's Williams Final, and will prove her favorite on Sunday again, especially But when they enter without man entering the decision.

Prior to the retirement of Ching, he faced a slight problem under the roof of the Lower Lawrence Arena, which only took 33 minutes to secure the first set of three breaks of service.

When Ching served for 1-1 in the second set, a great news came from Australia's crowded crowd, who hoped that a classic warfare test witnessed.

But 21-year-old Professor, Professor, was nominated, the Federation's empowerment was not an answer.

Federer beat 3-1 with dipping bucked hand and after the 58-run class, Ching needed the treatment on the roof of his feet after losing the next game, his first hope was that South Korea Already reached a big single final.

Chong won another game, but his movement was clearly influenced and ended his night after an hour and two minutes, the court invited the court to sympathize with the raid.

It was a frustrating end to the first meeting between Federer and the person, whose holiday bar Melbourne Champion Novkakakakak won the fourth round victory over the world and took notice.

The Federation said about Ching: "We will see the top 10 to ensure that it's maximum," he said.

"The rest? We will see. I will not put too much pressure on it." She is working very well and I can see that she defeated Nikkak and Sagittarius (Alexander Gaulov) and all others this week. In the past.

Chang retirement performed a spectacular performance from the Federation, who fired Nineveh and created only one double mistake.

The clinic advanced in the men's finals, when he defeated Bronnie Kelly Adund on a straight set in the semi-final on Thursday night.

Federer lead 8 8 runs in the semi-finals with his sole success in Kyrgyzstan in 2014 with his career heads.

Women to get equal prize money in Tour Down Under cycling event

South Australian government’s announcement hailed by this year’s winner Amanda Spratt as ‘a huge step forward for equality’

Riders in the Women’s Tour Down Under will receive the same pay as their male counterparts for the first time, the South Australian government has announced.

On Monday the state government announced that from 2019 it would increase the prize pool in the women’s cycling event by about $90,000, putting the competition’s prize pool on par with the male event.

The initial women’s prize pool had been about $15,000.

“These athletes are at the top of their game, displaying professionalism, determination and skill during every stage of the hard-fought race,” the South Australian sports minister, Leon Bignell, said.

“It’s only fair the prize money they receive is on par with their male counterparts for each stage as well as the general classification.”

Australian Amanda Spratt won this year’s Women’s Tour Down Under, as well as the Queen of the Mountain prize for best climber. She called the decision “a huge step forward for equality”.

“Having equal prize money will result in even more interest from top international female riders and help take this race to the next level.”

The UCI – the world governing body for sports cycling – has introduced equal prize money for men and women at its world championship and world cup events, but unlike men, women cyclists still do not receive a minimum wage.

In January last year the former Olympic and world champion cyclist Nicole Cooke told a British House of Commons inquiry in the sport that cycling was “a sport run by men, for men”.

 Tennis players want more money? It's not as absurd as it sounds

Greg Jericho

 

Read more

She pointed to a number of examples, including the 2006 British cycling championships, in which the women’s event was given “token” support.

“British male success on the international circuit at that time was nonexistent and previous British winner, David Millar was still serving his ban for doping.

The IQ test wars: why screening for intelligence is still so controversial – podcast

shutterstock.com

Daphne Martschenko, University of Cambridge

Online IQ “quizzes” purport to be able to tell you whether or not “you have what it takes to be a member of the world’s most prestigious high IQ society”. But despite this hype, the relevance, usefulness and legitimacy of the IQ test is still hotly debated among educators, social scientists, and hard scientists.

To understand why, it’s important to understand the history underpinning the birth, development and expansion of IQ tests – one that includes their use to further marginalise ethnic minorities and poor communities. Listen to our in depth article, which explores this history.

It is written by Daphne Martschenko and read by Gemma Ware.

You can read the text version of the article here. And click here to read or listen to more in depth articles.

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The music in this episode is Night Caves, by Lee Rosevere from the Free Music Archive. A big thanks to City University London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record this podcast.

Daphne Martschenko, PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

North and South Korea to unite at Winter Olympics: here are the hidden agendas behind this sports diplomacy

North and South Korean officials meet with International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach in Lausanne on January 20. Laurent Gillieron/EPA

Udo Merkel, University of Brighton

For many Western ears, Pyongyang and Pyeongchang sound very similar. Both are names of cities on the divided Korean peninsula. But the former is North Korea’s capital and show city, and the latter is the host town of the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea’s Gangwon Province. It is located just 80km south of the heavily fortified border between the two countries.

Some observers may think that this choice of location was ill considered. But it allowed South Korea to claim in its application to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2011 that the event would also contribute to an improvement of inter-Korean relations.

As the games approach, this is becoming more of a reality. On January 17, the two Koreas agreed to march under one flag, and to field a joint women’s ice hockey team. And on January 20, representatives from both countries met at the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, to discuss and agree the details of North Korea’s participation in the Winter Olympics.

The focus of the Lausanne meeting was on Olympic protocol. The unified team at the opening ceremony on February 9 will be called Korea, marching with the Korean Unification Flag, carried by an athlete from each country. The team’s anthem will be the Korean folk song Arirang. Under a “wild card” system, North Korean athletes will compete in figure skating, skiing and the joint ice hockey team.

Until the final days of 2017, this looked extremely unlikely as the governments of both Korean states had not talked to each other for over two years.

Foreign policy – and sports diplomacy is part of that domain – usually happens behind closed doors, as do the processes behind it. Detailed knowledge of North Korea and the country’s internal, political dynamics is also rather limited. This is the most secretive and least understood country in the world, and as a result, some issues have been overlooked or misrepresented regarding the upcoming Olympics detente.

A long time coming

Much reference has been made to Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s speech on January 1 in which he wished Pyeongchang all the best for a successful Winter Olympics and offered to talk about the participation of North Korean athletes. But to consider the speech as the trigger of recent events is wrong. He was simply responding – albeit belatedly – to a speech given by the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, in June 2017 at the opening ceremony of the Taekwondo Word Championships in Muju, South Korea in which Moon explicitly proposed to send a unified Korean team to Pyeongchang to improve inter-Korean relations.

Moon also reminded his audience of sport’s power to improve relations by referring to the “Sunshine Policy”, which was in place from 1998 to 2008. It focused on engagement and rapprochement and led to the two countries marching together at various Summer and Winter Olympics as well as other regional sporting competitions.

The Korean Unification Flag, waved at the East Asian Football Federation Women’s Cup in 2005. Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA

What most commentators overlooked was that Moon’s invitation to North Korea was also an encrypted diplomatic message to the US administration that the newly-elected South Korean government did not intend to follow the more confrontational, often incoherent, foreign policy approach favoured by the American president, Donald Trump.

By using his New Year speech to make his announcement, Kim knew it would attract both national and international attention. His words were clearly chosen for both audiences and contained two interrelated but different messages. For his domestic audience, they read: “I have Korean unity and reunification on my radar and will not forget it despite being preoccupied by developing our nuclear programme, testing missiles, UN sanctions, US threats, the warmonger Donald Trump, and so on.”

For the South Korean listeners, his words meant: “OK, I’ve got my missiles working now. That’s the American imperialists sorted. But I think we Koreans are somehow stuck in a cul-de-sac and, perhaps, should talk. Let’s keep it easy and simple at the beginning, leave Donald Trump out of it and talk about sport; and then we see where we go from there.”

The speed of the subsequent developments indicates that North Korea had thoroughly thought about this and was well prepared when the first talks between representatives of the north and the south took place on January 9. In comparison, almost a decade ago, negotiations between the two countries to send a unified team to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics took several months and led to nothing.

Playing politics

There is little doubt that the world of international sport continues to be a serious and very useful diplomatic tool. On this occasion, it may be a significant stepping stone for an improvement of inter-Korean relations. But, that depends on how serious Kim is as there is some concern that this is just a well-timed but short-lived public relations stunt. It also depends on whether this kind of sports diplomacy is fully embedded in a wider foreign policy from both North and South Korea that aims to achieve the same objectives.

Sport on its own is fairly powerless, but when skilfully integrated it can make significant contributions and promote wider foreign policy tools. It also provides the Korean people with access to a field of politics that usually lacks transparency.

For the IOC, this recent development was of course extremely good news and may distract from the Russian doping scandal and their other major concern, the steadily declining interest in hosting mega sports events.

Udo Merkel, Senior Lecturer in Events Management, University of Brighton

This article was originally published on The Conversation and here is published with permission. Read the original article.

NASA Examines Technology To Fold Aircraft Wings In Flight.

NASA conducts a flight test series to investigate the ability of an innovative technology to fold the outer portions of wings in flight as part of the Spanwise Adaptive Wing project, or SAW. Flight tests took place at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, using a subscale UAV called Prototype Technology-Evaluation Research Aircraft, or PTERA, provided by Area-I.

NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland developed the alloy material, and worked with Boeing Research & Technology to integrate the material into an actuator. The alloy is triggered by temperature to move the outer portions of wings up or down in flight.

The ability to fold wings to the ideal position of various flight conditions may produce several aerodynamic benefits for both subsonic and supersonic aircraft.

Robots and smart devices at tech show : CES 2018.

The biggest consumer technology expo in the world is wrapping up in Las Vegas.

The Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, featured thousands of smart gadgets, artificial intelligence devices and hi-tech cars.

One of the main trends in the expo was the drive toward more and more sophisticated technology in automobiles.

Huff Post Editor On Anzari Story: I Would Not Have Published This Piece .

The Dutch city that's more like Dubai.

You should always arrive in Rotterdam by train. That way, as you leave the station, you can turn around, as I did last month, put your bag down and look back at one of the most joyful buildings in the world. It’s the most exuberantly designed transportation hub since architect Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center at Idlewild Airport (later renamed JFK). Rotterdam Station soars, ignoring gravity, a balletic leap captured in steel, glass and wood.

This is the architectural test kitchen of Europe.

In any other city it would be a centrepiece, probably an anomaly, like Bilbao’s Guggenheim or Toronto’s City Hall. But in Rotterdam, it fits right in. This is a city of wild experimentation, the architectural test kitchen of Europe, a post-war Dubai or Doha, but done better. Instead of being thrown up by a single generation of wealthy people looking to make a global reputation, Rotterdam has evolved over three quarters of a century in response to the developing needs of its people and the times they have lived in. It’s a liveable, walkable, bikeable city. But it’s managed, like those Gulf state insta-cities, to impress at every turn, not with two or three standout buildings – a Transamerica Pyramid here, a Walt Disney Concert Hall there ­– but dozens.

But it wasn’t always this way.

Rotterdam Station is one of the gems of an architecturally jubilant city (Credit: Walter Bibikow/Getty Images)

At 1:28pm on 14 May 1940, a sinister apian buzz could be heard on the streets of the Dutch city, coming from the east. It was a sound they’d been dreading. Within a minute, the swarm was directly over Amsterdam’s twin sister with its own canals and ancient skinny timber and brick houses. Rotterdam was the industrial engine of the Netherlands and the world’s biggest port.

Fifteen minutes later, the planes turned back, leaving the city in flames that burnt for six days until there was nothing left to burn: 250 hectares, 25,000 homes, 11,000 commercial buildings in ashes. Rotterdam was gone.

Nearly gone. The fires weren’t even out by the time city officials met on 18 May to decide what to do next. Though the walls had mostly collapsed, there was more than enough to rebuild. It was the logical choice. It was a choice that Coventry, Warsaw and scores of German towns and cities would make over the coming years, putting Humpty Dumpty together again, piece by historically accurate piece, until a post-war visitor walking through the medievally narrow streets might never know.

In 1940, Rotterdam was reduced to ash and rubble by German bombers (Credit: Keystone-France/Getty Images)

Though there must have been some debate and some impassioned pleas to restore this 14th-Century city to something that could provide some sense of comfort and stability to generations of families, the decision that came out of that meeting was to bulldoze it all and start again. The city architect, Willem Witteveen, immediately started working on a plan. It would be new, but monumental and grand.

Then something even more remarkable happened. In 1944, when the city was still under German occupation but with an end in sight, industrialist Cees van der Leeuw called another meeting, this time in relative secret, in the tea room perched like a fascinator on top of his Van Nelle coffee, tea and tobacco factory. The factory was the city’s first modern architectural masterpiece (Le Corbusier called it ‘the most beautiful spectacle of the modern age’) and it was far enough from the centre to have been untouched by the war. There was an opportunity, van der Leeuw said.

After the city’s destruction, officials decided they would rebuild Rotterdam from scratch (Credit: robertharding/Alamy)

“These captains of industry thought it was better to have more flexibility than Witteveen,” explained Rotterdam architectural historian Michelle Provoost, pointing out that this business-led modernisation had started in the city even before the war, with buildings like Café Unie (destroyed and since rebuilt). “His plan was seen as too strict.” Witteveen wasn’t thinking big enough or modern enough for the businessmen or the German occupiers, who liked the idea of a blank slate to build a new, Reich-inspired city (which never got off the ground).

Van der Leeuw convinced the city to fire Witteveen and hire his assistant, Cornelis van Traa, to do something altogether more radical. “Van Traa introduced a free-flowing city of objects,” Provoost said.

This was the moment the new Rotterdam – the most architecturally serious, intense, playful, jubilant city in the world – was born.

Rotterdam is like Disneyland for architecture geeks (Credit: Geography Photos/Getty Images)

When you’re done gazing at Rotterdam Station, hop on one of the trams to Blaak station to get the full impact of the city. Walking out from under the subway station’s suspended peacock tail awning, you’ll see two masterpieces of late 20th- and early 21th-Century architecture. On your right are Piet Blom’s Kubuswoningen (1980-84), 39 cube houses, each balancing on its vertex atop its own stem, making for something that looks like a concrete forest. To the left is the Markthal (MVRDV, 2014), a massive horseshoe-shaped market with apartments and condominiums built into the sides. Inside is a mix of things to buy and things to eat (so much stroopwaffel). In addition to being iconic – the shape is simple but utterly unique – it is the logical evolution of the city marketplace where people can meet, eat and live.

Rotterdam is the most architecturally serious, intense, playful, jubilant city in the world

But what’s best about Rotterdam is what you see between the showpieces. Turn back around towards the tram stop and you’ll see Blaak 8 (Group A architects, 2012). It’s just an office building. It really doesn’t need to be as cool as it is, but look at its trapezoidal windows, its shape shifting every few floors. And over to your right, another office building, Blaak 31, has an Italian restaurant on the ground floor before it rises in three storey-high steps for no particular reason. The tax company that occupies much of it just announced that they’re building new headquarters in the shape of an hourglass; once again, just because.

Usually when I travel, I pick hotels based on location, history or amenities. In Rotterdam, I pick them for the architecture. For my first trip a couple of years ago, I stayed at Citizen M, part of a European chain of high-design, low-amenity hotels, this one low and flat, looking like something between a warehouse, a 1970s elementary school and a Mies ottoman. This time I stayed my first night in the Marriott in the Millennium Tower (WZMH, 2000), a late nod to postmodernism next to Rotterdam Station. My second night was in the city’s newest accommodation, a one-room hotel called the Wikkelboat. This floating room, moored in a marina, is made of 24 layers of wrapped cardboard, complete with deck and barbeque. It bobs under the Red Apple (KCAP, 2009), a cantilevered multi-use complex made with anodised aluminium that reddens naturally over time.

The shape of Rotterdam's Markthal is simple but utterly unique (Credit: EschCollection/Getty Images)

Rotterdam loves its buildings like Santa Monica loves its beaches. The best cafe space in town, the bottom floor of a post-war Bauhaus brick building with a glorious corner curve, is called the Dudok, named for its architect. Hugh, the bar and nightclub at the high-Modernist Hilton (1962), is named for Hugh Maaskant, the city’s premier post-war architect (who also did the Euromast, the city’s big tower).

Rotterdam is like Disneyland for architecture geeks. But it may be even more fun for the rest of us, who don’t usually pay attention to the buildings we work, play and live in, and who’ll go home and wonder why our cities can’t be a little more like Rotterdam.