World Wide Wednesday: Subway crash, street protests, fallen apartment building and more

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 in Toronto.

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• As many of you will have heard, the subway crash in Washington D.C. last week was the deadliest in the system’s history.  An aging fleet and outdated equipment seem partially to blame, which bodes badly for countless other older transit systems around the United States.

• Toronto may have received little more than The Finger from the Feds in terms of transit infrastructure money, but that’s certainly not the case in Edmonton. The city has recently received $100 million from the federal government’s economic stimulus plan to help expand Edmonton’s light rapid transit service.

• Rublyovo-Arkhangelskoye is the largest real estate development in all of Europe and Russia.  Located just outside of Moscow on a 430 hectare site, the project means to create “comfortable residences” and “elite appartements” for more than 100,000 people.

• A recent study conducted in New York City found that only 21% of bicycle trips in the Big Apple were made by women.  While most other cities in North America mirror these results, women in many European cities are just as likely to been seen biking as their male counterparts.

• As protests in Tehran, Iran become increasingly repressed, new forms of resistance are appearing in the city’s public spaces.  Besides street protests, Iranians are causing traffic jams and are flooding local bazaars with people to show their disapproval of the recent election results in the hopes that congestion will bring the country to a standstill.

• In an outer district of Shanghai, an almost completed apartment building toppled over on Saturday, raising questions about corruption and shoddy construction practices. One of a complex of 11 apartments, the building sits alongside a river and fell as an underground garage was being dug beneath the tower.

Photo from Reuters