Linkity-link: April 18th, 2008

In today’s episode, we have articles on the outcome of suburbanization on food accessibility, the crackdown of dissent at the University of Ottawa, and the sad and long-reaching effects of the Iraq Occupation on American soldiers. Enjoy!

Class & city planning

CBC.ca published an interesting article today on a report done by the Montreal Public Health Department:

Pedestrians are more likely to get hit by a car walking in poor neighbourhoods than affluent ones… The discrepancy can be explained by a relative scarcity of traffic calming measures in low-income areas, researchers at the department concluded.

This is, of course, a perfect example of how class interests shape how cities are built. City councils, which typically represent the interests of the suburban middle-class above the urban working-class, turn the inner-city into a giant highway for getting suburban commuters to their jobs and back; the people who live there are forced to live beside high-speed roads with high vehicle traffic.