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.
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• A big transit news week as the Obama administration announced the benefactors of the $8 billion investment in high-speed rail. Time Magazine ran an in-depth piece on what high-speed rail could mean for the future of America. The St. Louise Tribune however, questioned the merits of the investment; arguing that high-speed rail only serves a small (and relatively affluent) segment of the population and that investment in public transit is a far fairer and far wiser use of stimulus money. The Chicago Tribune, arguing that aesthetics matter as much as function, offers suggestions on how the future stations should be designed.
• Within the month the eyes of the world will be on Vancouver, and local activists are determined to make the city’s homeless population visible. In preparation for the media blitz sure to accompany the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, local organization Pivot Legal Society is launching the “Red Tent Campaign”.
• The campaign to empty out Moscow’s Rechnik neighbourhood, deemed by the city’s mayor to be illegally occupied, has the country in an uproar. Bulldozers teared through the neighborhood last week leveling homes and leaving families homeless in minus 20-degree temperatures. According to the New York Times, the neighbourhood’s struggle has become a rallying cry for the country as ordinary citizens, “politicians, human rights activists, media organizations and even nationalist and anarchist groups have come to the defense of the neighborhood”.
• And lastly, in a list that includes “both buildings and things built by architects” the Mammoth Blog compiles the best architecture of the decade.