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.
• We tend to associate mining operations with the hinterland. But in Johannesburg, 400,000 urban dwellers call the mining belt home and face incredible obstacles of environmental remediation, land tenure and service and infrastructure access. This breathtaking slideshow from Design Observer explores the human and natural ecologies of the mining landscape.
• In Vancouver, the city-owned parking management company has seen a dramatic 20% drop in revenues since the construction of the city’s Canada Line. As more people choose to take transit, parking stalls totalling 10.5 hectares or 3% of the downtown land area have opened up. As the Vancouver Observer explains, this behavioural change has also opened up opportunities for additional affordable housing and public space.
• “The same proximity that got hogs heads on clipper ships now enables smart people to learn from each other”. On this week’s Guardian Business Podcast, host John Vidal speaks with Edward Glaeser and Jonathan Glancey about making city life more productive and Britain’s ten enterprise zones. For more from Edward Glaeser, check out this recent interview about density, entrepreneuship and Indian cities at Globizen. 
• Some of the most interesting pieces of cities are hidden. BLDGBLOG explores the integration of “truth windows” into the urban environment to reveal the “subways, cellars, plague pits, crypts, sewers, buried rivers and streams… war-destroyed buildings… and lost ships” that lie beyond and beneath.
• “Nothing is more powerful for remaking Detroit as a center of innovation, entrepreneurship and population growth, than embracing and increasing immigrant populations and the entrepreneurial culture and global connections that they bring and deliver.” While the case for immigration as an urban revitalization strategy may not be controversial to Canadian ears, Steve Tobocman at Model D Media confronts prevalent negative stereotypes about Michigan’s immigrant population.
Image from Dorothy Tang, courtesy of Design Observer
Do you have a World Wide Wednesday worthy article you’d like to share? Send the link to www@spacing.ca