[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Montréal, Atlanta, Greenville, Sutera, Hong Kong

• Québec premier François Legault might well be convinced to support the Pink Line subway route favoured by Montréal mayor Valérie Plante. Global News reports.
• Guardian Cities reports on the popularity of the new soccer team of Atlanta in this perhaps unlikely locale.
• The North Carolina city of Greenville is trying to work towards settling its racist past with a new park, CityLab reports.
• Lorenzo Tondo at The Guardian reports on how new immigrants might save his father’s native village of Sutera in Sicily, but only if they are allowed to.
• Bloomberg View notes that a bridge alone will not be enough to bind Hong Kong to the emergent Pearl River megalopolis.

[ISL] Six links on islands, from contested geopolitics to environmental changes to Villiers Island

• In Toronto, the new Port Lands plan imagines a new island, Villiers, at the mouth of the Don.
• Brexit means, among other thing, that the EU is no longer supporting the UK on the Chagos. The Economist reports.
• VICE notes that people on Mauritius fear extensive fish farming will also boost the shark population offshore.
• The Independent notes that tides and currents have created a new sand bar-cum-island more than 1 km long off of North Carolina, Shelly Island.
• The National Post notes that sub-Arctic Vardo Island, in Norway, has moved on from its fisheries to become a NATO outpost set to watch Russia.
• Carmela Fonbuena reports for The Guardian from Thitu Island, a Filipino-occupied island uncomfortably near a Chinese base in the contested South China Sea.

[BLOG] Some Sunday links

• blogTO notes that yesterday was a temperature record here in Toronto, reaching 12 degrees Celsius in the middle of February.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly writes about the pleasure of using old things.
• Joe. My. God. notes the death of Roe v Wade plaintiff Norma McCorvey.
• Language Hat notes that, apparently, dictionaries are hot again because their definitions are truthful.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers if the Trump Administration is but a mechanism for delivering Pence into power following an impeachment.
• Steve Munro notes that Exhibition Loop has reopened for streetcars.
• The NYRB Daily considers painter Elliott Green.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer notes that North Carolina’s slippage towards one-party state status is at least accompanied by less violence than the similar slippage following Reconstruction.
• Window on Eurasia warns that Belarus is a prime candidate for Russian invasion if Lukashenko fails to keep control and notes the potential of the GUAM alliance to counter Russia.