This week’s best city stories takes us from barbershops in Philadelphia where a programme is bridging the gap between black men and the polling booths, to the grimy streets where residents are fed up of being treated like the underdogs and are suing the state. Share your thoughts about these city stories – and any others you’ve seen .As cities expand and encroach on the surrounding countryside, animals are forced to adapt to this rampant urbanisation, while urban dwellers must also learn how to life – and sometimes brush shoulders with their wild neighbours.
After disappearing completely from less than a century ago due to hunting, the Eurasian beaver has returned to the city thanks to a repopulation drive that took place in central Sweden in the 1920s. Today, the rodent has finally made its way back to the bustling capital, enamouring local residents with their goofy teeth, while wreaking havoc for park wardens who are concerned that their constant gnawing on urban trees could pose a safety risk in a city with so much green space.
Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the endangeredfeels right at home next to the roaring jet engines of Boeing-777s at LAX, while up in the Hollywood Hills roam around tourists without being spotted. As the US elections draw ever closer, one programme is working with barbershops in Philadelphia’s African-American neighbourhoods, to bridge the gap between black American males and the polling booth. Theinitiative sends volunteers into the barbershops in the city, to register voters and distribute information to those there for a quick trim.
As Sandy Smith rather than having outsiders parachute in to do the engaging, Sharp Insight is training the barbers to be the engagers”. She notes that these spaces already act as community hubs, where staff known their employees and carry out social service work on a daily basis.
The programme aims to train around 70 local barbers to act as civic engagement agents for their clients, to discuss the importance of getting actively involved in local government and voting in elections.In New York, there’s a man attempting to walk down every street in the city – day 1,573 update In London, there have been several attempts to Toronto, armed with a camera, one guy has just embarked on his biggest mission yet – to photograph all 2,433 laneways in the Canadian city. So far, Owen McCabe, a newcomer to Toronto, has shot 189 of the back alleys, but he doesn’t have a favourite.
Why, you ask? “It was really just a way — when I was trying to get to know the city a little better — to give me a purpose, to get out there and see different parts of it,” he tells the He’s enticed by the hidden quality of each narrow path, which enable people to dodge the hectic city streets, while discovering new spaces between the buildings. You can see McCabe’s Toronto As rubbish piles up on the streets of Paris’ Château Rouge neighbourhood, local residents are getting fed up. When the street traders pack up the market at the end of the day, cardboard packaging is strewn on the sidewalks and unsold produce is left to rot on the cobbles. But while the rest of Paris isn’t exactly known for pristine streets, locals feel that their complains about the rubbish are being repeatedly ignored by the city, and have now taken out legal action against the city for municipal neglect, and are demanding €20,000 worth of damages.
As Feargus O’Sullivan CityLab, the market thrives on low prices, selling affordable items to working-class residents, in an area with a large West African population. “Is it possible that the market is being singled out unfairly?”, he asks. “Before inner Paris started its slow progress to gentrified museum-style showcase, this type of low-grade disorder was surely more common. The lawsuit could also be portrayed as an attack by gentrifiers on the services on which their poorer neighbours rely.
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