- 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.
- 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] Nine Toronto links
Nov. 25th, 2019 05:56 pm- Metrolinx using paid influencers to promote the Ontario Line is certainly a choice. The Toronto Star reports.
- Union Station retiring an old mechanical system 90 years old used to control TTC vehicles is a landmark event. The Metrolinx blog reports.
- Jamie Bradburn looks at the birth of the Gardiner Expressway, here.
- Alok Mukherjee at Spacing questions why police in Toronto have stopped enforcing traffic regulations.
- Protesters charged with blocking the Bloor Viaduct during the Extinction Rebellion have had the charges dropped. Global News reports.
- Sean Marshall shared his account of his address to the Toronto Police Services board, here.
- Jamie Bradburn looks at the history behind the mid-20th century expansion of Church Street.
- NOW Toronto notes that workers at the Broadview Hotel have become unionized.
- Samantha Lui writes at NOW Toronto against the false negative stereotypes applied by so many--even briefly by Google--to Scarborough.
- CBC notes that a lawsuit surrounding benefits fraud by TTC employees has been settled, expensively.
- MacLean's reports from the GTA suburban city of Milton, a key battleground in the federal election.
- Hamilton police continues to be caught up in controversy over its handling of Pride. Global News reports.
- CityLab profiles new murals being created in New York City's Harlem, on 125th street, here.
- Guardian Cities considers some ambitious plans for remodeling Mexico City, with vast new neighbourhoods and airports, which never came off.
- Atlas Obscura looks at a notable library of books and other documents in the Yiddish language, housed out of a decrepit bus terminal in Tel Aviv.
- Tensions between the LGBTQ communities of Hamilton and the police remain high. Global News reports.
- The federal government will be providing funding for the new Great West Park of Montréal. CTV News reports.
- CityLab looks at the hometown of Toni Morrison, the Ohio community of Lorain, here.
- Guardian Cities looks at the question of how, or whether, a Buenos Aires slum should become an official neighbourhood, here.
- Guardian Cities reports on a small neighbourhood, Cosmo Park, built on top of a shopping mall in Jakarta, here.
- Bloomberg notes that, while New York City is gaining jobs, it is losing residents because of its housing crisis.
- CityLab takes a look at patterns of crime and race and violence in greater Pittsburgh.
- La Presse notes that Montréal, picking up from neighbouring Laval, has started a process of public consultations to try to come up with a common image of the metropolis' future.
- Guardian Cities notes that fashion giant Bestseller plans on building its skyscraper headquarters, 320 metres tall, in the rural Denmark town of Brande.
- This Irish Examiner article, part of a series, considers how the Republic of Ireland's second city of Cork can best break free from the dominance of Dublin to develop its own potential.
- Helen Armstrong at NOW Toronto writes against the crude repression, well short of constructive regulation, facing sex workers in Toronto.
- Donovan Vincent at the Toronto Star notes the Toronto controversy around the idea of having houses with two front doors, including one for a basement unit. Why must that unit's residents be hidden?
- blogTO notes the utter absence of the Eglinton East LRT in the new Toronto transit plan.
- Steve Munro considers the poor state of planning, and funding, for Line 1 of the subway.
- Toronto Life goes back more than a century to take a look at the many discarded plans for subways. Is it comfort, at least, that the lack of good planning is a trait apparently inherent to Torontonians?
- Sean Marshall reports on the long history of Toronto in coming up with new transit plans and failing to follow through.
- The failings of the one-stop Scarborough subway extension go back to the concept's very conception. The Toronto Star reports.
- The new plans of the province of Ontario for taking over the TTC are, rightfully, causing alarm at Toronto City Hall. CBC reports.
- blogTO notes the proposal for Union Centre, a new skyscraper in downtown Toronto designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group that will feature a treed roof.
- blogTO notes a new report making it clear that housing affordability has become a major issue for Torontonians, with costs of ownership and rental having reached new highs relative to income.
- Alok Mukherjee makes the point at NOW Toronto that any inquiry into Toronto Police conduct in the McArthur killings has to be part of a general inquiry into how the police conducts itself internally.
- Urban Toronto notes that Yonge and Eglinton is now being torn apart, again, for Eglinton Crosstown construction.
- Chris Bateman writes at CityLab about the singular achievement of Mies Van der Rohe in designing the TD Centre.
- blogTO reports that the TTC has abandoned the policy of collecting personal information from passengers accused of misconduct, an echo of police carding.
- John Lorinc writes at Spacing about ways to reframe the language used in debating the budget of the City of Toronto.
- Arlene Chan at Spacing tells the century-long history of Cantonese opera in Toronto.
[BLOG] Some Monday links
Feb. 18th, 2019 11:13 am- Colby King writes at the Everyday Sociology Blog about furnace, kiln, and oven operators as recorded in the American Community Survey. What experiences do they have in common, and which separate them?
- Far Outliers reports on the work of the Indian Labourer Corps on the Western Front, collecting and recycling raw materials from the front.
- L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing makes the case that the seeming neutrality of modern digital technologies are dissolving the established political order.
- Joe. My. God. notes a report from Andrew McCabe suggesting that Trump did not believe his own intelligence services' reports about the range of North Korean missiles, instead believing Putin.
- JSTOR Daily notes how the interracial marriages of serving members of the US military led to the liberalization of immigration law in the United States in the 1960s.
- Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on the connections of the police in Portland, Oregon, to the alt-right.
- Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution shares a report of the discovery of English-speaking unicorns in South America that actually reveals the remarkable language skills of a new AI. Fake news, indeed.
- The NYR Daily shares a short story by Panashe Chigumadzi, "You Can't Eat Beauty".
- Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw welcomes a new fluidity in Australian politics that makes the elections debatable.
- Drew Rowsome looks at the horror fiction of Justin Cronin.
- Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel shares some of the key historical images of Pluto, from its discovery to the present.
- Window on Eurasia takes a look at the only church of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church operating in Russia, in the Moscow area city of Noginsk.
- Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell makes the point that counting on opinion pieces in journalism as a source of unbiased information is a categorical mistake.
- Arnold Zwicky looks back, on President's Day at Berkeley, at his experiences and those of others around him at that university and in its community.
- Veteran Toronto online news hub Torontoist, silent for the past few months, has been acquired by Canadian combine Daily Hive. I wish Torontoist will; I miss it.
- A tunnel connecting the Dundas West TTC station with the Bloor UP station, a few hundred metres apart, is in the works but is still some years away. Toronto.com reports.
- A police officer who has been charged with negligence with regards to a 2016 claim of an assault by Bruce McArthur claims he is being made a fall guy. The Toronto Star has it.
- CBC Toronto looks at the low attendance at the Africentric Alternative School, despite the high praise it receives.
- At The Globe and Mail, former mayor John Sewell notes that the lack of consent of the City of Toronto to the takeover of the TTC by Ontario has some legal import.
- Christopher Hume at the Toronto Star writes movingly about the neglect of the beautiful Toronto Coach Terminal. This building deserves better.
- Ben Spurr at the Toronto Star notes the willingness of Metrolinx to turn customers' Presto data over to the police, even without warrants.
- Transit Toronto notes that surveying for the extension of the Yonge subway line north from Finch has begun.
- Metrolinx has gone on the record as saying that the Downtown Relief Line, relieving pressure on the Yonge line, must open before a northwards extension of Yonge into Richmond Hill. The Toronto Star has it.
- The Globe and Mail reports that, after rising numbers of suicide attempts, the TTC is going to redouble anti-suicide measures.
- Toronto is becoming a growing centre of the tech industry, the Toronto Star reports, tech sector growth driving the wider provincial economy.
- Jamie Bradburn takes a look at the advertisements, and history, of post-Second World War Power Super Market.
- Bombardier has missed a deadline for delivering vehicles for the Eglinton Crosstown, the Toronto Star notes.
- Toronto police officer Paul Gauthier has been charged with misconduct in connection with the Bruce McArthur case, over his treatment of the 2016 complaints of a man claiming he had been strangled by McArthur. CBC reports.
- Tricia Wood at Spacing Toronto argues against making the fight against congestion a key police aim.
- Jennifer Pagliaro and Emily Mathieu at the Toronto Star look at what's next for Regent Park.
- Gilbert Ngabo writes about how Niagara Falls, New York, would love the GO Train to cross the border into his city, his article featuring in the Niagara Falls Review.
- Michelle Da Silva writes at NOW Toronto about how the Montréal Igloofest is such a great idea.
- The tax on empty homes in Vancouver may yet be increased, to discourage speculation. Global News reports.
- Guardian Cities notes how tensions between police and locals in the Bairro do Jamaico in Lisbon reveal problems of integration for African immigrants and their descendants.
- CityLab notes how the popular novels of Elena Ferrante may drive gentrification in the Naples neighbourhood of Rione Luzzatti.
- Metrolinx shares a glorious map depicting traffic and trends at the different stops on its many routes.
- NOW Toronto notes how Doug Ford may yet enable carding-like practices by police.
- The criticism by an Ontario government minister of the state of Ontario Place is worrisome. The Toronto Star reports.
- Urban Toronto shares a photo of the construction at the vast Hive site downtown.
- George Popper at Spacing Toronto looks at three neighbourhoods where housing in Toronto can really densify indeed must densify, including the Bloor-Danforth corridor.
[BLOG] Some Sunday links
Jan. 27th, 2019 01:42 pm- Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes that Israeli non-profit SpaceIL plans to launch a lander to the Moon in February.
- Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber writes about the material power of ideas and knowledge in 2019.
- D-Brief shares the latest images from Ultima Thule.
- Earther notes that temperatures in the Arctic have been higher than they have been for more than one hundred thousand years, with moss spores hidden by ice caps for millennia sprouting for the first time.
- Far Outliers notes the economic importance, in the early 20th century, of exports of tung oil for China.
- JSTOR Daily notes the uneasy relationship of many early psychoanalysts with the occult.
- Lawyers, Guns and Money notes an alarming report from California showing how the police have been deeply compromised by support for the far right.
- Gillian Darley at the LRB Blog writes about a now-forgotten Tolstoyan community in Essex.
- Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution notes a new book by Kevin Erdmann arguing that the United States has been experiencing not a housing bubble but a housing shortage.
- Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes the Boomerang Nebula, a nebula in our galaxy colder than intergalactic space.
- Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy looks at libel law as it relates to the Covington schoolboys' confrontation.
- Window on Eurasia notes a window, in the early 1990s, when the independence of the republic of Karelia from Russia was imaginable.
- Arnold Zwicky free-associates around blue roses, homoerotic and otherwise.
- Urban Toronto notes that 1 Yorkville is nearing completion.
- Urban Toronto notes the plans for the massive redevelopment of Davenport Village, north and west of Dupont and Lansdowne.
- The Sony Centre is now going to be called Meridian Hall, thanks to the Ontario credit union of the same name buying the name rights. blogTO reports.
- This story of a tenant who was deprived heating by her landlords' neglect is appalling. I hope things get fixed quickly for her. Global News reports.
- Declan Keogh reports in NOW Toronto that the funding problems of Pride Toronto are linked to the police ban enacted in 2016.
- This Nicholas Hune-Brown feature at Toronto Life about the crisis of homelessness in Toronto is terribly compelling in sharing these stories.
- This Toronto Life feature on the installations on the seventh floor of the Hudson's Bay makes this place very visit-worthy.
- The Walrus reports on the exceptional difficulty of travelling within the Akwesasne reserve, split between Canada and the United States and even Ontario and Québec.
- This Global News feature takes a look at the survival of traditions, and their evolution, in Kahnawake.
- This Toronto Star report tells of Indigenous complaints about continuing police racism in Thunder Bay.
- NHL-themed totem poles actually are a thing, Global News reports.
- The Discourse shares the story of out gay Heiltsuk man Steven Hall.
- At NOW Toronto, city councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam writes about her frightening experiences being targeted in campaigns by the alt-right.
- Sean Marshall mapped the municipal election results in Parkdale-High Park and Davenport.
- Alok Mukherjee at NOW Toronto notes how the Toronto police manage to evade engaging with its history of anti-black racism and violence.
- The National Observer notes the criticism of the Ontario Press Council of the Toronto Sun for its false report of refugees in a Scarborough hotel slaughtering goats.
- Perhaps unsurprisingly, Metrolinx is still awaiting delivery of the first Eglinton Crosstown vehicle from Bombardier. The Toronto Star reports.
- Urban Toronto shares a photo of the Residences of 488 University Avenue, built on a converted office tower and nearing completion.
- Urban Toronto notes newly-released plans for the massive redevelopment of the Scarborough Town Centre area, transforming parking lots into space for more than a dozen residential towers and extensive parks.
- CBC notes that Andrew Cash, former NDP MP for my riding of Davenport, is seeking the NDP nomination for the 2019 riding. I would strongly consider voting for him if he does run.
- CBC notes a study reporting on the terribly high rate of interactions, including violent ones, between black Torontonians and police.
- blogTO reports that BiWay, an old Canadian discount retailer, is set to make a return to Toronto in 2019.
- Toronto Life interviews people on the street in Cabbagetown about what they think about a controversial proposal for a new daycare in that neighbourhood.
- blogTO notes a few of the holiday light tunnels up, from Yonge and St. Clair south to the waterfront.
- Rabble asks a useful question: How much does the Toronto public know about plans for the waterfront?
- John Lorinc at Spacing fears much may go wrong in the development of the Toronto waterfront, between a flawed auditor-general's report and the new Ford government of Ontario.
- I must go to this graffiti-lined alley paralleling Ossington starting north of Queen. blogTO reports.
- There may yet emerge a substantial condo development on what is now the parking lot of the Dufferin Mall, to the northeast of the mall proper. blogTO reports.
- Happily, the Supreme Court of Canada will not hear an appeal by the former policeman convicted of killing Sammy Yatim. VICE reports.