Stories featured in
Cities Are Depaving for a Cooler Future
It all started because a man named Arif Khan wanted a garden. In 2007, he had recently moved into a house in Portland, Ore., whose backyard was covered in asphalt. Some friends helped him tear up the impervious surface, and soon after, they won a small grant to carry out a similar project in front ofREAD MORE
Swimmable Cities Are a Climate Solution
As recently as the 1940s, New Yorkers swam in floating pools in the Hudson and East Rivers. A safer alternative to swimming directly in the river, the municipal baths kept residents cool in hot summer months until they were closed over sanitation concerns. Now, as the city contends with life-threatening heat, can New Yorkers once againREAD MORE
“We Each Have a Commitment to the Community”: Solar Resilience in a Puerto Rico Town
Leer en español. For two weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, Lucy’s Pizza was the only restaurant open in the central mountain town of Adjuntas. The town’s 18,000 residents, like those on the rest of the island, were entirely without electricity. “No one has power, you can’t get gas, it’s difficult to makeREAD MORE
Buscando Luz: “Cada uno de nosotros tiene un compromiso con la comunidad”
Este reportaje fue publicado en colaboración con Next City. Esta versión en español fue traducida por Patricia Guadalupe por palabra. Click here to read in English Durante dos semanas después de que el huracán María devastara a Puerto Rico en 2017, Lucy's Pizza era el único restaurante abierto en el pueblo de Adjuntas en la CordilleraREAD MORE
How Our Obsession With Parking Fuels the Climate Crisis
What could a city like New York achieve if it repurposed some of its 3 million curbside parking spots? It could get rid of rats by moving trash off the sidewalks and into containers. It could create safe, cool play spaces for the more than 1 million New Yorkers without easy park access. It could buildREAD MORE
Meals on Wheels Is a Climate-Relief Model
When an unprecedented heat wave bore down on Portland, Oregon, in June 2021, Jonna Papaefthimiou, the city’s chief resilience officer, immediately thought of the city’s most vulnerable populations: older people sweltering, often alone, in their homes. She called Suzanne Washington, who runs the local chapter of Meals on Wheels. “That overlap of their demographic and theREAD MORE
Cities Are Rethinking What Kinds of Trees They’re Planting
After a series of winter storms pummeled California this winter, thousands of trees across the state lost their grip on the earth and crashed down into power lines, homes, and highways. Sacramento alone lost more than 1,000 trees in less than a week. Stressed by years of drought, pests and extreme weather, urban trees are inREAD MORE
Italy Is Fighting Energy Poverty — and Climate Change
San Giovanni a Teduccio is a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Italy. Once an industrial center, today it’s home to abandoned factories that sit in ruins by the sea. But the rooftop of a former orphanage points to new beginnings for the community. There, the sun shines onto the deep blue surface of 166READ MORE
How Norway Became the World’s Electric Car Capital
When Trondheim-based Magnus Korpås bought his first electric car in 2019, he settled on a Tesla—the model of car that offered the most charging stations available to him at the time. However, in just a few years, Norway built out its charging infrastructure so quickly that no matter what type of electric vehicle (EV) you choose,READ MORE
Freeways Blighted Milwaukee’s North Side. Can Tearing Them Down Bring New Life to the City?
Before the freeways came in, Bronzeville, on Milwaukee’s North Side, was a vibrant neighborhood known for its restaurants, bars and jazz scene. The area had been home to successive waves of immigrants and most recently had become the heart of the city’s Black community. But it suffered a major blow in the 1960s when large swathsREAD MORE
Greener Playgrounds Are an Overlooked Climate Solution
The new schoolyard at PS 184M Shuang Wen, a grade school in Manhattan’s Chinatown, features new play equipment, a yoga circle, a stage and basketball and tennis courts. It also has a porous turf field that can capture an estimated 1.3 million gallons of stormwater runoff, according to New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).READ MORE
Community Land Trusts Are Building Disaster-Resilient Neighborhoods
In late September, Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful and costly storms to make landfall in the U.S., tore through southwest Florida and caused an estimated $67 billion in property damage. But on Big Pine Key, a community 100 miles southwest of Miami that saw flooding and storm surges up to five feet, 27 nearly-finishedREAD MORE
Composting in Detroit Gets a Boost From the Philippines
On a recent Saturday morning, Pamela McGhee and several neighbors were busy at work in a community garden on Detroit’s East Side, weighing food scraps and assessing compost piles for compliance. Items in the compost are assessed according to a “yuck” and “yay” system. “Yuck” items, like animal bones and meat, which do not compost well,READ MORE
Young Farmers Can Help the US Meet Its Climate Goals. Is Washington Listening?
At Sanctuary Farms on Detroit’s East Side, Jøn Kent and a team of volunteers use cardboard and paper bags to starve invasive weedy plants instead of herbicides; they plant marigolds and lavender amid squash, melons, and collards instead of pesticides; and turn food scraps into lush, clean compost. He and his business partner, Parker Jean, wantedREAD MORE
“It Was Like Taking the Heart Out of the Body.”
Growing up in Rosemont, a once vibrant Black neighborhood on Baltimore’s West Side, Glenn Smith remembers “having everything you needed” — parks, markets and even a movie theater — within walking distance of the home he shared with his parents and seven siblings. “It was a Norman Rockwell existence,” he said. But in 1974, when SmithREAD MORE
Cities Are Tapping Residents to Study Climate Change Impacts
On very hot days, Victor Sanchez makes sure to leave his home in the afternoon. "The sun just pours in," he said of his top-floor, west-facing apartment in Harlem, where he has two fans but no air conditioner. Sanchez usually finds a shaded bench in nearby Morningside Park, sees a film or rides his bike toREAD MORE
Extreme Weather Is Only Getting Worse. Can Cities Protect Public Transit?
Last September, New York City was so thoroughly inundated by Hurricane Ida that some commuters waded through water up to their waists just to get in and out of the subway station. Across the country, extreme heat battered the West Coast, melting Portland’s streetcar power cables. This summer is seeing similar headlines, with heatwaves warping theREAD MORE
How Cities Can Help the U.S. Reduce Food-Related Emissions
The United States must cut back on its meat consumption in order to meet its climate goals. Meat and dairy account for nearly 15 percent of global greenhouse emissions, and Americans eat more meat per capita than any other country. Though it is long understood that reducing meat consumption is one of the most meaningful waysREAD MORE