What We’re Following
Beverly Hills stop: Last Friday, students at Beverly Hills High School staged a walkout. It wasn’t your typical act of youthful rebellion: It was a permission-slip-approved, school-bus-assisted rally against the Purple Line, a new Metro extension that’s set to travel under the school.
The school’s resistance isn’t exactly a secret: It’s been in a legal battle with the Los Angeles County Metro since 2012, claiming in three separate lawsuits that it has environmental and health concerns related to subway tunneling below its buildings. And it turns out, as reported by the Beverly Hills Weekly, that the district has been bankrolling the anti-subway efforts with bond money that’s meant for improving school facilities.
Los Angeles’s wealthy west side has been wrestling over the subway extension for decades, and as the construction phase finally kicks off, the school’s role in trying to stop it has become its own point of controversy. (Somehow, there’s even a Trump connection.)
CityLab’s Laura Bliss reports: Beverly Hills Has Financed Its Metro Fight With $13 Million In Local Taxes
More on CityLab
‘To Get the Maddies of a City Home’
An obituary for Madelyn “Maddie” Linsenmeir, 30, of Burlington, Vermont, who died earlier this month from complications from opioid addiction, went viral. Penned by Maddie’s sister, the tribute describes a young mother who “was hilarious, and warm, and fearless, and resilient,” and who also struggled with an addiction to opiates since she was 16. The city’s police chief, Brandon del Pozo, says he has one problem with the tribute. “It’s a much better obituary than the rest of us deserve,” he wrote on Facebook.
Why did it take a grieving relative with a good literary sense to get people to pay attention for a moment and shed a tear when nearly a quarter of a million people have already died in the same way as Maddie as this epidemic grew?
The police chief writes that law enforcement officials know that what happened to Maddie “happens all the time, to people no less loved and needed and human.” He then calls for urgent action—from overdose kits to drug treatment to stabilized housing. Police, he writes, have one clear job in the crisis: “To get the Maddies of a city home.” Read his full post here.
CityLab context: Six charts that explain the opioid crisis
What We’re Reading
The research on Seattle’s minimum wage hike looks a little more foggy (New York Times)
Will the real Atlanta please stand up? (The Guardian)
A class-action lawsuit is coming for e-scooters in California (Washington Post)
Search for Amazon’s HQ2 sparks real estate speculation (Wall Street Journal)
In the age of Instagram museums, what happens to haunted houses? (Vox)
Tell your friends about the CityLab Daily! Forward this newsletter to someone who loves cities and encourage them to subscribe. Send your own comments, feedback, and tips to hello@citylab.com.