[URBAN NOTE] Fifteen Kingston, Ontario links (#kingstonon)

• CBC reports on suggestions that Kingston should plan for a population expected to grow significantly in coming decades, to not just expand but to have intensified development downtown.
• The rental housing market for Kingston is very tight, not only because of large student populations. Global News reports.
• Kingstonist reports on Queen’s plans to build a large new student residence on Albert Street, here.
• The Whig-Standard carries an account of the new Queen’s principal being interrogated by Kingston city council over issues of friction between school and city, including costs for policing (and not only at Homecoming weekend).
• This summer, farmers in the Kingston area saw poor crop production as a consequence of the weather. Global News reports.
• Happily, the budget of the city of Kingston was made to accommodate costs for Murney, the police force’s horse. Global News reports.
• Weston Food’s plant in Kingston has seen forty jobs cut. Global News reports.
• Lake Ontario Park, in the west of the city, may be reopened to limited camping. The Whig-Standard reports.
• Kingston hockey player Rebecca Thompson is now playing for the team of Queen’s. Global News reports.
• Queen’s University is not alone in urging its exchange students in Hong Kong to evacuate. The Whig-Standard reports.
• Yesterday, a plane crashed in the west of Kingston, killing all seven people aboard. CBC reports</u..
• Chris Morris at Kingstonist has a long feature examining the Kingston Street Mission, interviewing outreach worker Marilyn McLean about her work with the homeless of the city.
• Kingston-born street nurse Cathy Crowe talks about homelessness, in Kingston and across Canada. Global News reports.
• The family of Royal Military College cadet Joe Grozelle, who disappeared from his campus and was later found dead two decades ago, wants his fate reinvestigated. Global News reports.
• A hundred students at a Kingston public school are being taught how to skate, part of a pilot program. Global News reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Detroit, Québec City, Boston, Queens, Colonia del Sacramento

• CityLab shares newly unearthed photos of the destroyed Detroit neighbourhood of Black Bottom.
• The National Post reports that apparently the latest iteration of the Winter Carnival in Québec City has not met with popular approval.
• CityLab explored for Valentine’s Day the notable history of Boston as a centre for the manufacture of candy.
• CityLab notes how the nascent condo boom in Queens’ Long Island City, set to capitalize on the Amazon HQ2 there, has been undermined abruptly by Amazon’s withdrawal.
• Ozy looks at the historic Uruguay town of Colonia del Sacramento.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Centauri Dreams looks at the genesis of ocean worlds. Having a nearly massive star producing lots of radioactive aluminum when it supernovas might be surprisingly important.
• The Crux takes a look at languages newly forming in the world around us, starting with the Australian language of Light Warlpiri. What does this say about humans and language?
• D-Brief notes that researchers have managed to create cyborg rats whose motions are controlled directly by human thought.
• Gizmodo reports on the abandonment by Amazon of its plan for a HQ2 campus in Queens.
• JSTOR Daily shares the perfectly believable argument that people with autism should not be viewed as people incapable of love.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Simon Balto writes about how the Ryan Adams scandal demonstrates the male gatekeeper effect in popular music.
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution comes up with a list of winners and losers of the Amazon decision not to set up HQ2 in Queens. (Myself, I am unconvinced New York City is a loser here.)
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how, despite not interacting directly with normal matter, dark matter can still be heated up by the matter and energy we see around us.
• Window on Eurasia notes how, in many post-Soviet countries including the Baltic States and Ukraine, ethnic Russians are assimilating into local majority ethnic groups.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Hamilton, Montréal, Queens, Berlin, Vancouver

• CBC Hamilton recently reported on a new Facebook group intended to help Torontonians find their footing in neighbouring Hamilton.
• Will the new designs of the Montreal Alouettes be enough to reverse the CFL team’s dwindling fanbase? Global News considers.
• CityLab points to the overlooked architectural heritage of Queens, in New York City.
• Guardian Cities reports on plans to rehabilitate roadside grandstands in Berlin abandoned for nearly a century.
• Georgia Straight reports on a proposal for supposedly affordable rental housing in Vancouver that is no such thing. Below-market rates are not enough when prices are so high already.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Queens, Fort McMurray, Casablanca, Aleppo, Baghdad

• Guardian Cities looks at prosperous Long Island City and hard-pressed Blissville, two neighbourhoods of Queens that will be transformed by Amazon moving in.
• CBC notes how, for Fort McMurray five years after the oil boom’s end, the bust is the new normal.
• CityLab reports on how the Art Deco Les Abbattoirs complex in Casablanca, once an emerging artist hub, has been emptied by the city government.
• This Middle East Eye feature looks at the relief and loss felt by returning survivors in Aleppo.
• Guardian Cities looks at how Baghdad, fragmented and impoverished by war, is fumbling towards some sort of livability.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Queens, Edmonton, San Francisco, Manizales, Tbilisi

• VICE considers how mass transit issues in Queens will be changed by the Amazon HQ2 relocation there.
• The Edmonton alternate paper Vue Weekly will be closing down this month, Global News reports.
• The ongoing disastrous fires in California have left San Francisco with the worst recorded air quality of any city in the world, Global News reports.
• Guardian Cities looks at how the disaster-prone city of Manizales, in Colombia, prepares for catastrophes.
• Guardian Cities looks at how, after years of unregulated construction and growth, the Georgian capital of Tbilisi is trying to prepare for smarter growth.

[URBAN NOTE] Six city links: skyscrapers, Queens, Montréal, Vancouver, Gangneung, Amsterdam

• CNN reports on the rise of slender skyscrapers, in New York City and elsewhere.
• VICE notes how badly the temporary shutdown of the L line has been hurting the Queens neighbourhood of Astoria.
• National Observer wonders what Montréal can do to be friendlier to seniors. (Being open to consulting broader demographics is a good start.)
• Global News notes concerns in Vancouver that excessive condo development could block the view of the mountains surrounding that metropolis.
• CBC reports on the South Korean city of Gangneung, a place that has become the locus of that country’s coffee culture.
• VICE reports on the effect that licenses allowing nightclubs to operate 24 hours a day has had on nightlife in Amsterdam.

[URBAN NOTE] “Ask A Native New Yorker: Is Queens Doomed To Be The Next Brooklyn?”

Gothamist’s Jake Dobson writes about the homogenizing effect of gentrification, in New York City’s boroughs and in the wider world.

Have you ever noticed that all gentrified neighborhoods are alike, but each ungentrified neighborhood is cool in its own way? Like I could drop you in any hipster area anywhere in the world—Brooklyn, Austin, Portland, Berlin, Tokyo—and you’d be surrounded by the same scene: coffee bars with people tapping away at Macbooks, an upscale dive bar filled with guys with beards, a bunch of restaurants selling farm-to-table food. Even the graffiti would look the same!

Why is that? Why doesn’t gentrification look different everywhere? Maybe it’s because it has the same basic ingredients in each place: students and artists and gays looking for an affordable place to live, and the small business owners they attract who cater to their tastes. Or more likely, because a lot of gentrification is engineered by property owners and banks working from the same template, and it’s a lot easier to copy a place which has produced investment returns, like Williamsburg, than it is to try a new idea. Or, ultimately because capitalism is all about commodification, even when the commodity that’s being sold is authenticity. That’s some next-level post-modern Marxist critique right there!

Media plays a sad role in this. But they have a good excuse: they do it for the money! Allow me to explain: the New York Times is not a monolithic business. In reality, it is composed of many important bastions of journalism, like the international section, the Metro desk, Science, etc. These are valuable and very important for our democracy. But these sections are expensive to run and often lose money, so they must be supported by more advertiser-friendly areas of the paper, like Style and Real Estate, or the odious billionaire ball-cupping that gets done at DealBook.

[NON BLOG] Reunions

I have always enjoyed the too-rare reunions with my colleagues and friends from my MA year at Queen’s University, not only because I get to enjoy their company again but for the reunion’s epiphenomena. The most recent reunion saw me do karaoke, Pink’s 2002 song “Don’t Let Me Get Me”.

Me, performing Pink.
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

My rocker poses aside, Pink does a much better job with the song.