A Bit More Detail

• Peterborough is facing a serious shortage of housing. Global News reports.


• In Kingston, the restoration of the Bellevue House that was home to John A MacDonald continues. Global News reports.


• The federal government will provide funding for the new streetcar route in Québec City. CTV News reports.


• Will the Detroit television documentary series filmed by Anthony Bourdain see a release? One hopes.


• Richmond, a Vancouver suburb home for decades to a substantial diaspora from Hong Kong, is deeply affected by the ongoing protests there. The Toronto Star reports.

• Hazel McCallion, the nonagenarian former mayor of Mississauga, has been appointed an advisor to the Ford government in Ontario. Global News reports.


• A Simcoe County that faces a threat of amalgamation under the Ontario provincial government is already composed of communities feeling they lack adequate representation. The Toronto Star reports.


• CityLab notes how a history of racism complicated efforts to plant new trees in Detroit.


• Douglas Todd at the Vancouver Sun notes how ethnic tensions in multicultural South Burnaby surfaced in the former Liberal candidate's treatment of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh.


• The NYR Daily looks at what is going on in and around El Paso as the Mexican-American border facing further closing.

• The TVO show The Life-Sized City is spotlighting the revival of the binational conurbation of Detroit and Windsor. The Windsor Star reports.


• Owners of a house that is a rare survival of Africville, currently in Lower Sackville, are seeking heritage status for this building. CBC reports.


• VICE reports on how New York City is preparing for the L train shutdown.


• Students seeking to set up Gay-Straight Alliances in Calgary Catholic schools are reportedly being hindered, even harassed, by hostile administrators despite provincial policy. Global News reports.


• This SCMP article suggests Shenzhen is a popular destination for daytrippers from Hong Kong, for people who seek a Hong Kong experience at affordable prices.

• The small eastern Ontario town of Smiths Falls has been saved by a marijuana production boom that has brought hundreds of jobs to the community. The National Post reports.


• This Montreal Gazette article takes a look at the background behind the strong economic growth recently displayed in Montréal.


• CityLab looks at how Paris, under Mayor Anne Hidalgo, is preparing for global warming.


• Tom Perkins at The Guardian reports on how hopes for a redevelopment of downtown Detroit have been hindered, a supposed new core being transformed into a sea of parking lots.


• Stewart Bell at Global News reports on the sorry state of the city of Mosul after the end of ISIS.

Ford Motors is redeveloping the abandoned Detroit Central Station to house workers' offices. Global News reports.

• JSTOR Daily takes a look at how Washington D.C. evolved over generations into a major tourist destination.


• Wired suggests that Los Angeles is doing quite a good job of managing its limited water resources.


• Restaurants in San Francisco are adapting to the high costs of labour in that city, with its expensive housing, by starting a shift to self-service models. The New York Times reports.


• The city of Rome makes compelling backgrounds for the films of Italian Michelangelo Antonioni. Spacing has it.

• I only hope that Mississauga will do better with food trucks--will do better by food trucks--than Toronto. The Globe and Mail reports.


• Hamilton is now a risk area for Lyme disease, with black-legged ticks now present. Global News reports.


• If Ford really will buy the beautiful abandoned Michigan Central Station and rehabilitate this place into a functioning building, this will be a huge signal for Detroit. Detroit News a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/ford/2018/03/19/ford-talks-tenant-michigan-central-station/33088971/">reports.


• Is the new Edmonton Valley Line LRT route going to be able to handle near-future growth in traffic? Global News reports.


• Real estate prices are so high that well-paid tradespeople apparently have no plausible choice other than living in trailers beneath Skytrain tracks. MacLean's reports.

• rue Sainte-Catherine Street in Montréal is set to have three years of heavy construction. The Toronto Star reports.


• Painting the brutalist structures of the Washington D.C. metro, as described and depicted by CityLab, sounds absurdly unaesthetic to me.


• The critical take of Vice on regressive taxation policies in Detroit that deprive people of homes is worth reading.


• Scroll.in suggests that bad planning has done terrible things to the Indian metropolis of Bangalore.


• Trump has had a decidedly negative effect on the Christians of the Palestinian city of Nazareth. Al-Monitor reports.

• Anything but the softest of Brexits is going to leave Dover, port of entry into the UK, with massive traffic jams. Bloomberg reports.


• The people of the largely Russian city of Narva, in Estonia, occupy an awkward but viable position. (For now.) Open Democracy reports.


• Detroit is making a come-back, but many of its long-time inhabitants are not enjoying the revival. VICE reports.

• Centauri Dreams remembers Ben Finney, this time from the angle of a man with an interest in space colonization.


• Crooked Timber wonders what will happen to the Anglo-American tradition of liberalism.


• Dangerous Minds imagines the VHS tapes of Logan and Stranger Things.


• Far Outliers notes the Soviet twist on Siberian exile.


• Inkfish notes that Detroit is unique among cities in being a good place for bumblebees.


• Marginal Revolution wonders if modern Germany really is a laboratory for innovative politics.


• The NYRB Daily looks at José Maria de Eça de Queirós, the "Proust of Portugal".


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw updates his readers on his writing projects.


• Torontoist reports on how Avi Lewis and Cheri DiNovo have advocated for the NDP's Leap Manifesto.

As major delays continue to plague the TTC’s order of 204 new streetcars from Bombardier, other cities like Detroit and Los Angeles are celebrating the arrival of their fresh transit vehicles, built by other manufacturers, on — and in the case of Detroit, ahead of — schedule.

For car-friendly Los Angeles, its most recent transit endeavour has seen far more efficient — and timely — results than Toronto’s streetcar overhaul.

In August 2012, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority chose Japanese firm Kinkisharyo International to produce its new fleet of light rail vehicles, in part due to the company’s reputation of delivering on time. Kinkisharyo had previously built 62 light rail cars for Seattle’s Central Link from 2006-2010.

The initial contract tasked Kinkisharyo with producing a base order of 78 light rail vehicles. Satisfied with the partnership, L.A.’s transportation authority later increased its order to 235 vehicles, at a cost of more than $900 million.

[. . .]

The news in Detroit is also positive. While the order is not to scale of either Toronto’s streetcars or L.A.’s light rail vehicles, the first of Detroit’s six streetcars rolled in last month, and the new QLINE streetcar system should be operational by spring.

It took about 14 months from the time M-1 Rail, the organization leading the development of the 3.3-mile-system, signed on with Brookville Equipment Corporation to the delivery of its first car.

“We have worked at a faster pace, I think, than a lot of entities,” said Dan Lijana, spokesperson for M-1 Rail. “We basically set a target to try to get all these cars here on a more advanced schedule and they worked with us every step of the way to make that happen.”