Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
• At FastCompany, urban designer Ryan Gravel speaks to power of catalyst projects to revitalize urban communities. He cites the example of the Atlanta BeltLine, a 22-mile rail route turned linear park, as a possible model.
• At The Atlantic Cities, Allison Arieff reflects on the industrial re-design of NYC’s Times Square. Architect Craig Dykers muses, “There’s that film noir quality that some people have about Times Square… and the grittiness of the street is a part of it… It’s not taking its cues from pretty little things in Europe or something. It’s kind of like the heart of New York City. It’s a heavy, muscular thing.”
• Thieves in North Beaver Township, Pennsylvania, raised the (re-)bar this past week when they stole a 50 by 20 foot bridge for scrap metal. The bridge dated back to the early 1900s and was primarily used for rail traffic. (CNN) 
• Ross Douthat at the New York Times uses Steve Jobs flair for cultivating beauty in modernity as a set of parallel instructions for the world’s city builders and policy makers: “From the Apple store to “The Incredibles,” Jobs revived the romance of modernity — the assumption, shared by Victorian science-fiction writers and space-age dreamers alike, that the world of the future should be more glamorous than the present.”
• The World Monuments Fund is taking care to preserve the world’s best brutalist architecture. Jonathan Glancey at the Guardian notes that preservation “takes time … and the danger is that while buildings go through unfashionable phases they are in danger of falling into disrepair, and being demolished.”
Image from OldIronBridge
Do you have a World Wide Wednesday worthy article you’d like to share? Send the link to www@spacing.ca