[URBAN NOTE] Seven city links: Montréal, Camden, Derry, Rome, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Dhaka & Calcutta

• La Presse notes that the Bixi bike-sharing service in Montréal is celebrating its 11th anniversary.
• Marginal Revolution notes how better policing cut into crime in Camden, New Jersey.
• The NYR Daily looks at how Brexit and a hardened border will hit the Northern Ireland city of Derry.
• Guardian Cities reports on the gang that goes around Rome at night making illegal repairs to crumbling infrastructure.
• CityLab reports on how Cape Town is coping, one year after it nearly ran out of water.
• Roads and Kingdoms shares tips for travellers visiting Hong Kong.
• Guardian Cities reports on the families made refugees by Partition who tried to swap homes in Dhaka and Calcutta.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, New York City, Dunblane, Wuppertal, Cape Town

• CBC Montreal looks at how the city of Montréal deals with snow disposal in winter.
• NOW Toronto reviews The World Before Your Feet, a documentary examining the life of one Matt Green, who aims to walk all the thousands of kilometres of streets of New York City.
• VICE reports on how the mass shooting of Dunblane still affects survivors and townspeople even two decades later.
• CityLab looks at the unique Schwebebahn mass transit system in the Ruhr town of Wuppertal, and what it says about transit culture in Germany.
• CityLab takes a look at Cape Town, where a foodie culture is not reflected in ready access of all to food, and how some people are trying to fix this.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Sherbrooke, New York City, New Orleans, Nottingham, Cape Town

• The 2023 Jeux de la Francophonie, originally planned for New Brunswick, have been taken up–provisionally–by the Québec city of Sherbrooke. HuffPostQuebec reports.
• Carmen Arroyo at Inter Press Service writes about Pedro, a migrant from Oaxaca in Mexico who has lived in new York City for a dozen years without papers.
• CityLab notes evidence that natural disasters can indeed advance gentrification, looking at the example of New Orleans.
• Guardian Cities shares some cartoons by Carol Adlam about the English city of Nottingham, neither northern nor southern.
• Civil servant magazine Apolitical takes a look at how Cape Town managed to escape its threatened water crisis.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, London, Moscow, Cape Town, Tokyo and Kawaguchi

• Ici Radio-Canada notes the stiff competition that the port of Montréal is facing from its American competitors.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the solidarities created among diverse groups in London by the effects of the Blitz.
• Window on Eurasia notes the paranoia of some commentators and power figures about the emergence of ethnic neighbourhoods in Moscow, Central Asians featuring particularly.
• Guardian Cities notes that Bo Kaap, a traditionally Muslim Coloured enclave in Cape Town, is facing severe pressure from gentrification.
• The South Chima Morning Post notes the fact of the emergence of a thriving Chinatown in the Tokyo suburb of Kawaguchi, and the controversy that this new neighbourhood has created.

[URBAN NOTE] Five cities links: New York City, Caracas, Cape Town, Dallas, Tolyatti

• That New York City is the safest big city in the United States, as Henry Goldman reports for Bloomberg, does not surprise me. When I was there last month, it felt safe, throughout, even at 11 o’clock at night in the middle of Brooklyn.
• This brief article about the effects of the world-record high crime in Caracas terrifies me, and makes me feel very sorry for Venezuelans.
• Cape Town may be facing water shortages, Craig Welch writes at National Geographic, but it is not alone. Los Angeles and São Paulo are also on this unhappy shortlist.
• Tracey Lindeman argues at Motherboard that bike-sharing programs in cities like Dallas, where there has been no planning to make the city bike-friendly, are doomed to fail unless the work is put in.
• Diana Karliner at Open Democracy takes a look at the plight of workers in Russia’s car industry, in its heartland of the city of Tolyatti.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Rex at Anthro{dendum} considers Ursula K Le Guin from as an anthropologist by background and interests, and as a denizen of a “Redwood Zone” of western North America with a particular climate.
• Centauri Dreams notes the exceptional technical progress being made towards the next generation of space telescope technology.
• Dangerous Minds shares photos of collaborations between Grace Jones and Keith Haring in 1984 and 1986, when Haring painted the star’s body.
• Gizmodo at io9 shares stunningly detailed photographs of the giant Pi1 Gruis, some 530 light-years away.
• Hornet Stories shares a letter from the mother of a girl ten years old who describes how this theatre fan was positively affected by the Manhattan production of Kinky Boots.
• Language Hat shares a Quora answer talking about the way Azerbaijani sounds to speakers of the related Turkish. Much discussion ensues.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money shares the disturbing report that moderate conservative Victor Cha has been rejected as a candidate for US ambassador to South Korea because he warns against war with the North.
• The Map Room Blog shares disturbing maps showing the extent to which the water reservoirs of Cape Town have been depleted.
• Non-binary writer Robin Dembroff argues at the NYR Daily that state recognition of non-binary gender identity, while well-meaning, is ultimately less good than the withdrawal of gender identity as a category of state concern.
• The Planetary Science Blog wonders if space travel and space science, of the sort favoured by Society president Bill Nye, could become a bipartisan issue uniting Americans.
• Seriously Science notes that at least some species of birds prefer to date before they pair-bond and have children.
• Towleroad reports that The Gangway, oldest surviving gay bar in San Francisco, has shut down to make way for a new laundromat/movie theatre.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little considers the factors that lead the people in charge of industries facing decline to ignore this. Could the education sector be one of these, too, depending on future change?

[URBAN NOTE] Five cities links: New York City, Cape Town, Calgary, Montréal, London

• Justin Fox at Bloomberg View questions whether the strong economic growth of New York City, continuing from its 1970s nadir, can continue given underinvestment in infrastructure like transit.
• CBC reports on the appalling scale of the Cape Town water crisis, made possible by a combination of rapid growth with sustained drought and terrible political responses.
• Global News suggests that the IOC likes the surviving Olympics infrastructure in Calgary, so much so that it thinks this places the city in good position for a bid for the 2026 games. (Don’t do it, Calgary!)
• This brief article in the Montreal Gazette talks about Chinese investors and migrants moving into the traditionally Anglo-dominated West Island. This is new to me: What is going on there, I wonder?
• The Guardian considers a report commissioned by London and its mayor Sadiq Khan considering the possible cataclysmic impact of Brexit on the economy of that city. Will it happen, and under what conditions?

[NEWS] Some Sunday links

• The Atlantic notes Thailand’s “fake children”, life-sized dolls that are charms.
• Bloomberg View considers the costs to the United Kingdom of Brexit and the costs and benefits of said to the European Union.
• Discover looks at the increasingly appreciated place of South Africa in hominid origins.
• The Inter Press Service examines the closure of Bedouin settlements in Israel.
• MacLean’s celebrates the Yukon Gold potato’s 50th anniversary.
• National Geographic looks at the growing number of problems faced by the baboons of Cape Town.
• The New Yorker considers what might be in the suppressed 28 pages of the 9/11 report.
• Phys.org maps Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry worldwide.
• Reuters notes the discovery of the first monkey fossils in North America.
• Slate hosts an article complaining about the normalization of Berlin since reunification.
• The Washington Post mourns the bleaching of nearly all of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.