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

[rfmcdonald]

• 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.