World Wide Wedneday: Los Angeles, Denver and Mumbai

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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• In 2004, the City of Denver committed $4.7 billion to an ambitious transit project called FasTracks, to be completed by 2017. Supported by thirty-two regional mayors, FasTracks included provisions for six new light and commuter railway lines along with 29km of bus lanes across the metropolitan area. But 6 years later almost nothing has been constructed. This week The Economist looks at what went wrong in Denver and why the city is back at the drawing board.

• Los Angeles residents are getting a respite from the city’s ubiquitous corporate mega-ads, as 21 billboards around the city are displaying the work of local artists. The project, entitled “How Many Billboards? Art In Stead” is a large-scale urban art-installation organized by Los Angeles’ MAK Center for Art & Architecture.

• On the topic of billboards, the New York Times recently looked at the risks that emerge when the medium goes digital.  According to critics, digital billboards–constantly changing and visible from a great distance–work to distract drivers and can be more dangerous than cell phones.

• The CityFix Mumbai Blog reports on the launch of the city’s first bike sharing programs–Cycle Chalao and FreMo–and the budding cycling culture in India’s largest city.

• Recent images from Haiti and Chile are jarring reminders of the kind of havoc earthquakes can wreak on precarious urban environments. An article in the New York Times finds that millions of people in the  developing world are at risk of a similar fate as burgeoning makeshift communities continue to be constructed along earthquake fault lines.

photo of Denver RTD’s light rail by Jeffrey Beall