[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: GTA, Montréal, Portland, Berlin, Seoul

• Sean Marshall at TVO notes the limited, if real, potential of a new ride-sharing app to bridge the transit gap between Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph, and Hamilton in the west of the Golden Horseshoe.
• CBC Montreal notes delays in the renovation of the Biodôme.
• CityLab notes that in Portland, Maine, volunteering can help one get access to affordable housing, literally.
• CityLab notes how the government of Berlin is set to intervene directly in the housing market to ensure affordability.
• Guardian Cities looks at how Seoul is set to redevelop the districts once at the heart of the South Korean economic miracle.

[META] Eight new news sources

It’s time to add new links and news sources to my blogroll, ones reflecting my interests.

• CityLab is a great news source looking at different urban phenomena within individual cities and uniting cities. CityLab hosts Sam Weber’s article looking at the many problems facing North Korean defectors as they try to assimilate into ultra-sophisticated Seoul.
• The Conversation CA hosts Stephen Scherer’s article explaining the importance of sequencing the genomes of Canadian animals.
• The Discourse is a new Canadian media start-up promising in-depth coverage on Canadian issues. Before the recent Ontario election, they started a hashtag, #GTADiscourse, to see what people in the GTA underserved by the media were concerned about.
• The Guardian Cities takes a look at urban issues around the world. I liked this Mireille Silcoff article explaining the import of 1 July to the inhabitants of Montréal: It’s moving day!
• Steve Benjamins hosts Village, a new subscriber-only newsletter focusing on Toronto. I liked this article about a Seaton Village beekeeper, here.
• The venerable hard-left Canadian news site Rabble has plenty of thought-provoking articles, like Barâa Arar’s essay explaining their fear of what a Doug Ford government in Ontario might do.
• American queer magazine Them has plenty of great articles. I liked this one confirming that Tessa Thompson, Valkyrie in Thor and Janelle Monáe’s rumoured girlfriend, is out as bi.
• Toronto website and discussion forum Urban Toronto reports on a massive mural set to grace the Parkside Student Residences at Jarvis and Carlton.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Anthro{dendum] considers drifting on roads as an indicator of social dynamism, of creative reuse of road infrastructures by the young.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares photos of the Christmas Tree Cluster, a portion of NGC 2264.
• Centauri Dreams notes how the strange polar orbit of GJ 436b indicates the presence of a neighbouring exoplanet so far not detected directly.
• Crooked Timber considers the import of perhaps racist codings in children’s literature.
• D-Brief examines how NASA is trying to quietly break the sound barrier.
• Bruce Dorminey suggests building a Mars-orbit space station makes sense for us as our next major move in space.
• Hornet Stories shares the story of queer male Lebanese belly dancer Moe Khansa and his art.
• Language Hat notes how one student made substantial progress of decoding the ancient khipus, knotted string records, of the Incan civilization.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money makes the obvious point that opioids actually do help people manage chronic pain effectively, that they have legitimate uses.
• Allan Metcalf at Lingua Franca talks about some of the peculiarities of English as spoken in Utah.
• Noah Smith at Noahpinion argues the disappearance of the positive impact of college on the wages who drop out before completing their program shows the importance of higher education as a generator of human capital, not as a simple sort of signal.
• The NYR Daily looks at some particularly egregious instances of gerrymandering in the United States.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer examines the origins of street violence as a political force in modern Argentina.
• Roads and Kingdoms looks at the Seoul neighbourhood of Haebangchon, “Little Pyongyang,” a district once populated by North Korean and Vietnamese refugees now becoming a cosmopolitan district for people from around the world.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel notes the origins of the atoms of our body in stellar catastrophes detectable from across the universe.
• Strange Company notes the case of Catherine Packard, reported dead in 1929 but then found alive. Whose body wasit?
• Towleroad reports a study suggesting same-sex relationships tend to be more satisfying for their participants than opposite-sex relationships are for theirs.
• Window on Eurasia notes how a Russian Orthodox group is joining the fight against Tatarstan’s autonomy.

[URBAN NOTE] Five notes about East Asian cities facing the future

• Singapore, with ultra-low fertility and immigration controversies, is set to face rapid population aging.
• Shenzhen, the city on the Chinese border with Hong Kong explicitly made after its neighbour, is surpassing its model.
• Well-to-do Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong are worsening that city-state’s real estate crunch.
• Is China set to shift its model of economic growth to one favouring productivity and consumption in its megacities? Livemint looks at the data.
• Susan Crawford writes for Wired about how the city government of Seoul is trying to use big data to make things better.

[URBAN NOTE] “How (Not) To Restore Urban Waterways”

Torontoist’s Emily Macrae reports on what lessons, positive and negative, Toronto can take from Seoul’s bringing a buried waterway to the surface.

Today, the Cheonggyecheon stream flows through almost 11 kilometres of downtown Seoul, but it spent much of the last century covered in concrete. As the city grew, the stream became increasingly polluted, until it was paved over in 1958.

When an expressway was built along the stream’s course in 1971, it seemed like local politicians had literally prioritized the circulation of vehicles over the water cycle.

However, between 2003 and 2005, the city invested $900 million (U.S.) to restore the stream and remove the elevated highway. Today, water once again winds through the downtown while the source is anchored by a large public plaza.

[. . .]

From an environmental perspective, the stream is only a partial victory. As activist and academic Eunseon Park explains, the stream bed is made of concrete, which limits integration with surrounding ecosystems and contributes to an expensive algae problem.

Socially, the project lacked public consultation and was instead pushed through by the mayor, intent on cementing his legacy before entering national politics.

[URBAN NOTE] “Seoul Plans a Sublime, Flower-Covered High Line”

CityLab’s John Metcalfe reports on a plan to convert an old overpass in Seoul Korea into a high-rise park evocative of New York City’s wonderful High Line.

New York’s High Line is nice and all, with its rotating artwork and modest beds of grasses and shrubs. But Seoul is planning something that will give it a serious run for its money: a converted overpass packed with lush greenery, burbling water, and even a street library.

The ‘70s-era Seoul Station Overpass was originally used for vehicle traffic and has a sprawling, multi-armed design that’s perfect for a new urban park. Rotterdam architecture firm MVRDV has taken full advantage of the structure’s immense scale—56 feet high and more than 3,000 feet long—planning to divide it into several “neighborhoods” of native plant species. The trees and dangling flowers, colored all the hues of a pop starlet’s makeup cabinet, will shelter cafes selling tea, flower shops, produce markets, and, as if the space needed more chlorophyll, greenhouses.

More, including multiple stunning renderings, at the site.