Friday News Roundup

Here are our favorite headlines from the world or cities, urbanism, transportation, and beyond. Take a look below and share what you’re reading in the comments.

KFC just published a ridiculously raunchy and bizarre romance novella starring a Casanova Colonel Sanders. (Business Insider via Paris Review)
“To celebrate Mother’s Day — the chicken chain’s best-selling day of the year — KFC published ‘Tender Wings of Desire,’ a novella following the love affair between Lady Madeline Parker and Colonel Harland Sanders… ‘The only thing better than being swept away by the deliciousness of our Extra Crispy Chicken is being swept away by Harland Sanders himself,’ George Felix, KFC US’s director of advertising, said in a statement.”

State seeking developer to demolish Capital Plaza Tower and convention center. (Herald-Leader)
“Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration is seeking a private developer to tear down and replace a large swath of downtown Frankfort, including the 26-story Capital Plaza Tower, the Frankfort Convention Center, Fountain Place Shops and two parking garages.” (More: WFPL)

Could you live Downtown? (Louisville Magazine)
“When they first moved in almost eight years ago, Debbie says, ‘It felt like The Shining. You could go a week and never see anybody.’ Since then, their building, and downtown, has changed. Bill Russell, who was one of the first to move into Waterfront Park Place in 2004, says that now he sees more people walking their dogs and more tourists (he says the miniature Slugger bats give them away). And though several hotels, a renovated and expanded convention center and more bourbon attractions are underway, much of the current downtown development is housing.”

How Disneyland’s Main Street, USA, changed the design and preservation of American cities. (KCET)
“It’s hard to overstate how radical a constructed cityscape Main Street, USA, was when it opened in Anaheim in 1955. Across the U.S., cities and towns were tearing out their historic downtowns in favor of automobile-oriented cityscapes: sprawling parking lots, streets built to highway specifications, large insular buildings that spurned the city outside.”

Amazon creating a place for hundreds of homeless on its shiny new Seattle campus. (Seattle Times)
“Amazon will devote half of one of the buildings to Mary’s Place — giving it a six-story, 47,000-square-foot shelter that will house more than 200 people in 65 rooms. The capacity is similar to the temporary shelter it will replace, but the space is about 10,000 square feet larger. It will be rent-free, with utility bills paid. Forever. And right next to the office space where Amazon workers reinvent cloud computing and the retail world.” (More: NPR)

Why did the U.S. Census Director resign? (The Atlantic)
“The results of the United States census, which takes place every decade, are crucial for determining the allocation of government resources for schools, law enforcement, and housing. Information collected by the census also has a direct bearing on how American citizens are represented in federal government since the population count serves as the basis for how congressional districts are carved out.” (More: NPR, WaPo)

Another day, another shooting: Photographing Chicago’s violence. (Columbia Journalism Review)
“Photojournalists like Wambsgans—conflict photographers on the frontlines of their own streets, in their own cities, capture the intersection of guns and police, and poverty and race. At many of the crime scenes he documented, Wambsgans and Tribune overnight reporter Peter Nickeas sometimes showed up before the police did. They stayed for hours, witnesses to horrors that have defied Chicago city officials and community leaders. ‘Sometimes we will stand there for three or four hours if nothing is happening, waiting for something to reveal itself in a subtle way,’ Wambsgans says.”

Myanmar is restoring temples to rebuild its heritage. (NY Times)
“Bagan’s monument complex is a crown jewel in a tourism sector that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and has grown rapidly since Myanmar, a majority Buddhist country, began a rocky transition toward democracy in 2011.”

Tar Baby: A folk tale about food rights, rooted in the inequalities of slavery. (NPR)
“The tar baby story in which Bre’r Rabbit outwits Bre’r Fox is a classic trickster folk tale. But like all fables, it is a double-barreled affair, with entertainment firing in tandem with a serious message. The question the story addresses is a fundamental one: Who controls access to food and water? Or, more crucially, who controls access to food and water when the rules have been turned upside down by giant forces like colonialism, slavery, global trade and the loss of the commons to enclosures?”