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  • Inside the Battle to Close Rikers

    New York City plans to close the eight jail complex located on Rikers Island and replace it with a series of four smaller, community-integrated facilities in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. While the administration has faced community pushback, the city has gleaned insights about the process, including jail reform and design and how to receive feedback from the community. The goal is for this plan could lead to further decarceration, financial savings for the city, and facilities that incorporate job-training, substance abuse treatment, and counseling into its services.

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  • Waste to Wealth: How Kenyan farmers are bringing life back to degraded Lake Victoria swamps

    Families living in the wetlands of Lake Victoria in Kisumu, Kenya are working together with a nonprofit called Ecofinder Kenya to protect and conserve the wetlands they live on. The crux of the incentive centers around the Eocfinder toilet, which converts human and animal waste to biogas, but they also work with solar lamps, water pumps, and a "farmer-to-farmer" program in which farmers share environmentally-friendly expertise. The program has been going on for 3 years now, and the wetlands have since seen a return of wildlife and growth, particularly with fish and birds.

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  • What a beautiful tiny house in rural Japan can teach us about the health of cities

    A rural Japanese town partnered with AirBnb to create a community home that showcases the community's unique lumber products while bringing tourism into the town. Community members trade off caring for the house, which is made of locally-sourced wood and serves as a focal point for renewal and economic stimulation in the region.

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  • Restoring Indonesia's peatlands to their natural soggy glory

    The Indonesian government is working with family farmers in Borneo to spread the cultivation of sago crops, which requires the restoration of the country's historic, boggy swamps. This type of agriculture, called paludiculture, makes the lands less prone to devastating wildfires, protects residents' health, reduces CO2 emissions, and offers a long-term farming solution.

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  • Pittsburgh's ‘living building' focuses on eco-friendly construction

    Creating sustainable buildings requires rethinking many of the norms in construction and city planning. The Center for Sustainable Landscapes, part of the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, received the first Living Building Challenge (LBC) certification. To achieve this, CSL advocated for changes to Pittsburgh’s laws on the use of public water utilities. CSL also had to seek out construction materials that avoided the use of harmful chemicals-a task easier said than done.

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  • The gardens of Quito: Urban farming in one of the world's highest cities

    AGRUPAR, a program funded by the Quito local government, supports 4000 urban farming plots across the city. One of its goals is to make healthy, organically-grown produce more accessible to marginalized groups, including Venezuelan refugees and women. For 17 years, the group has provided education, support, and resources to make urban farming a reality.

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  • These five cities are taking bold steps to rein in sprawl

    The sustainable city of the future involves public transit and a revitalized downtown - at least, that’s the common thread between what five cities are working towards across the globe. Los Angeles, Atlanta, Shanghai, Hamburg, and La Paz have all taken efforts to invest in building cities where families can work and live without commuting in a car, and where walking is encouraged. Some have made more progress than others, but government investment in sustainable design bodes well for the future.

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  • The Street Corner Answer

    Access Ventures, a community development organization founded in a Louisville neighborhood, uses a comprehensive investment approach that encourages funds to be dispersed in all issue areas. Instead of creating one "affordable housing fund" or "homeless services fund," the group interweaves investment strategies, making sure to look at the bigger community picture when laying out an investment plan.

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  • Rebuilding Cities, With Culture at the Core

    City planners and governments often overlook culture when trying to rebuild cities blighted by war, disasters, or other types of urban distress. But not Medellín, Colombia. After the drug trade made Medellín a violent place, the local government turned to the concept of "citizen culture" to restore the city. By building libraries and parks, enabling art, and creating transportation access in the comunas in the hills above the city, the government invested in people-centric policies that also made economic sense.

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  • Could Designing a Better Bus Lane Be Done With a Simple Can of Paint?

    The implementation of "tactical transit lanes," or bus-only lanes, has allowed for decreased commute times for both buses and drivers in cities across the country. Many cities, like Everett, Massachusetts, choose to conduct a rough pilot of the TTLs, relying on community feedback and commute statistics to guide more permanent plans.

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