The Parallels are Erie

This article ripping Dubai's city planners' work apart seemed oddly relevant to Edmonton, most especially in regard to the skewed cars-to-pedestrian ratio and oil-financed infrastructure spending...but really, the Jane Jacobs' reference forced me to post it here. Unavoidable, really.

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/613885

No More Newspaper?

At the Writer's Panel, I asked Todd Babiak if he thought the Journal had a hope of succeeding in an increasingly paperless world, and if that side of the Edmonton institution was doomed to evaporate or just diversify. His answer was a mixed-bag; largely, he said niche-oriented information outlets would gain prominence, such as periodicals about the Edmonton LGTBQ community (I think thats the right order for the acronym...). Also, and more alarmingly, he focussed on the fact that these sources of information about Edmonton and its happenings would necessarily be greatly slanted towards specific viewpoints, and more frighteningly, the only source for vital political information on our city's legislators and elected representatives would become well-spun stories from right and left-wing polarized blogs and sites (HuffPo and The Drudge Report being the American examples used). The one critical thing this rather dystopian future is missing that the Journal currently provides is then a mostly-impartial forum, where no letters to the editor are censored and stories are reported regardless of their impact on a political party. Long blog short, we need a way to maintain this function, as the fast news and increasing fragmentation of the communication-blessing that is the internet leaves us ever the more isolated, and paradoxically, drives what remains of the Edmonton community further apart.