This account explores how we invest in and build The Urban Planet — the two per cent of Earth where most people live, work, connect and invest. Cities, communities, infrastructure, technology and the ideas shaping them. The places where human, intellectual and financial capital converge. I’m looking for the stories, companies, people and ideas building what comes next. If you have something worth understanding, send it my way. I’d like to share the best with the 25,000+ leaders in the CityAge network.

This tech can be used in emergency response vehicles, as well. You can jump obstructions.

Elon Musk’s flying car raises a bigger question: where does this technology go next? Last night, Tesla’s Roadster drove up a ramp, hung upside down, launched into the air, rotated and landed on its wheels. The demonstration brought spacecraft-style manoeuvring to a car. Two systems make this possible: powerful fans create the suction that holds it against an inverted surface, while compressed-air thrusters provide bursts of propulsion and control in the air. Tesla puts the Thrust version’s zero-to-60 time at under one second. Car enthusiasts will want it. For racing, the spectacle and the experience of driving something unlike anything else on the track. But the applications could go much further. Imagine a rescue vehicle that could hop over an obstruction. Or a military vehicle that could clear a wall, cross damaged terrain or accelerate rapidly out of danger. Turning that possibility into a reliable working vehicle would require much more testing, particularly with people and equipment aboard. But it’s now possible. The compressed-air system makes this especially interesting. At the unveiling, Musk explained the Roadster can recharge its air tank, without special propellant. The practical questions are how quickly, with how much energy, and how often it can repeat those manoeuvres. Some call it a flying car. I think a rocket car may be a better description: short bursts of thrust, drawing on technology already used to manoeuvre spacecraft. Then consider Mars, Elon’s planetary target for Spacec With about 38 per cent of Earth’s gravity, the same takeoff speed and angle could carry a vehicle higher and farther. Mars has an atmosphere, but it is thin and mostly carbon dioxide, making gas collection and compression a tougher but solvable engineering challenge. In face, researchers have already explored Mars hoppers using locally collected carbon dioxide. A purpose-built vehicle that drives across easy ground and hops over difficult terrain is a serious idea. The Flying Roadster is now real. The bigger question is where does Musk see this going.

SpaceC and Tesla leave the others flat-footed.

The car industry is left on the ground. Literally.

I thought the Tesla Roadster hop demo was CGI. It’s not. Doing that with real mass under full Earth gravity is wild. Now picture the same system on the Moon or Mars. Zero media leaks for years. They just quietly built it. The interesting use cases aren’t for daily drivers. This is a new level of engineering (and marketing)

I'm going to read it.

I love it when people dish on what goes on behind the closed doors of power. Used to be my favourite thing to write about. My former Globe and Mail colleague Chystia Freeland — a foreign correspondent, editor and Canada's deputy PM — does just hat in her new political memoir, 'Unreliable Boyfriend: An Insider’s View of Dealing with a Chaotic Superpower, Plutocrats, and Other Complicated People.' She dishes on former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s language policing around the cabinet table: At one point, “a very progressive female colleague” casually referred to something as “crazy,” earning her a “long, harsh public scolding from Trudeau” on the grounds that the word was insulting to people with mental health issues. Ministers were instructed to call things “bananas” instead. It inspired me to offer up the gentle cartoon below

“Canada will continue to join allies in supporting Ukraine’s defences and its citizens. And we will continue to maximise our exports of oil and diesel to the United States that yield well over a million barrels of diesel per day.” — PMO

Hark is very, very interesting. It's dead simple. It sets a new direction.

Now. That’s a true observation.

China and America are the same operating system. Nationalism infused into everything. Banquets and pageantry are soft power. They race for supremacy: AI, orbit, the moon, trade. Money. The delta is chaos. The one that can run more of it without crashing takes the century.