Halifax’s own Classified, takes a page from City Spk in his new video, Anybody Listening? which makes use of the song title as urban typography plastered all in different spots on the streets of Toronto.

From wellandgood.ca

imaginaryanimals.com

terryhughesimages.com

Voici un excellent site proposé par la chaine culturelle Franco-Allemande ARTE : http://gaza-sderot.arte.tv/

Le but est de montrer le quotidien des habitants de deux villes, frontalière, Gaza coté palestinien et Sderot en Israël, au travers d’un série de capsules vidéo.

L’interface du site propose les capsule vidéo par pair. À chaque vidéo coté Gaza est associé un vidéo  coté Sderot, dans la même fenêtre, elle sont simplement séparé par une ligne de temps permettant de se déplacer dans le contenu du site.

Le site offre donc une vue très intime du conflit et du quotidien des habitants de cette région, et ce des deux coté de la frontière. Mais je vous laissent aller sur le site, ils en parlent mieux que moi.

Image taken by wednesday181, Flickr Creative Commons

Mucha produced a flurry of paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewellery, carpets, wallpaper, and theatre sets in what came to be known as the Art Nouveau style.

The video for Stop Me is like a living testament to the eighties in Manchester. In all its burned out post industrial shell the Smiths lads bike about so dismal and unrestrained.

So many signs and places and I am told that only the Salford Lads Club still stands amongst all that living wreckage of the Industrial Revolution. There is even a not so subtle nod to the Coronation Street franchise which still runs strong.

Since then the cranes have come out and Manchester likes to say how it has more cracking than even London itself. That remains debatable but the fact is the barren landscapes have undergone serious regeneration. John Davies, the UK photog is famous for his photography of the Uk including Manchester in much of its post industrial years. He was amongst this years Deustche-Boerse Photoraphy Prize winners.

Cabrini-Green was once called America’s worst slum high rise housing projects. Now with some help from a heap of dynamite the failed monolith is finally history. What is to replace it is a mixed income human scaled community.

The Chicago Housing Authority is executing a whole new vision for the city. See a link to video of new replacement housing etc. here.

Also in Chicago, Ida B. Wells homes are slated for demolition, but this doc tells of its former life from the inside.

Gang Leader for a Day is a book by Sudhir Venkatesh about researching the Robert Taylor Homes. Built over 40 years ago, all 53 projects are slated for demolition by 2009. Many are already gone. Robert Taylor Homes housed around 27,000, when the demolition is done about 40,000 people will be displaced. Hear Sudhir talk about the book on NPR here. Along with an accompanying book review.

This just in from our roving cityspk adept Karl-André St. Victor. He just sent me these tantalizing snaps of sun drenched signs from the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Truly, i cannot say enough about hand painted signs, it is a lost art up here. Back in the days, guys like the father of Casius Clay (Mohammed Ali) plyed it as their trade all over America. Here is remembering the glory days, albeit in a more rustic version. So, here is saying a big sak passé to Karl from Cityspk.

In an only somewhat related news item, local tensions have peaked between youth in Montreal’s mainly Haitian community of Monteal North and MUC police. In suburban Little Haiti, riots flared up after a suspicious police shooting — akin to the Parisian banlieue’s in 2005. Much could be said about the anomy of these type of far flung urban consellations and the overall périphérique/centre split.