nextcity.org

How Half a House, WikiHouse and the IKEA effect will change how we design and build our homes.

Tens of millions of Americans go to bed hungry at some point every year. While poverty is the primary culprit, some blame food insecurity on the lack of grocery stores in low-income neighborhoods.

As more and more people live in densifying built environments, the importance of spending time outdoor encountering natural phenomena and learning to live closer to the seasonal cycles of the weather increases. The everyday experience of being connected to nature is a key factor in long-term health and well-being. Spending time outdoors also presents opportunities to meet other people and have shared encounters.

“Shelter poverty” — the inability to cover other essential living costs because housing costs too much — represents an $8 billion cost, borne by “public assistance, private charity, or personal deprivation.”

When Maria Isabel Contreras and her husband moved to Mexico City’s Iztapalapa district, 30 years ago, water was not an issue. But as the district urbanized, the taps began to dry up. Today, the nine-person household — four adults and five children — receives three hours of continuous supply of murky, brown water each day, before the water runs out.

In a rapidly evolving pro-pot landscape, how will cities rectify the extreme racial disparities in drug sentencing, and legislate an equitable marijuana marketplace?

Edmond-Vargas and Charles Berry started developing curriculum in 2013 to educate other incarcerated men on how their lives have been affected by patriarchy and toxic masculinity. The full program, which launched February of 2014 under the name Success Stories, includes a variety of intersectional feminist texts with a focus on bell hooks.

Inspired by a realization that no housing is affordable without a living wage job, nonprofit community development corporations in NYC and around the country have started taking a larger interest in organizing to protect land zoned for manufacturing.

When a city’s character honors and reflects the local culture, everyone benefits.

In Virginia Beach, the largest city by population in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the sea is rising about twice as fast as the global average.

“Dollar stores are really becoming a threat in a lot of areas in terms of eliminating access to fresh foods.”

Lessons from the Dutch, where the number of bikes exceeds the number of people.

How grassroots study groups, nonprofit fellowships and municipal fiscal support conspire to seed the cooperative ecosystem, particularly for people of color.

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, which hit in August of last year, some Houston conservationists are urging that the city consider prairies as a tool for a more resilient city in an era when climate change is fueling more powerful and more frequent major storms.

Today, nearly half of all residents of US cities live in a middle neighborhood. It’s not a place where real estate is hot, where prices skyrocket and cause displacement. Nor is it a place in distress, overwhelmed by vacancy and neglect. But they’re also starting to disappear.

“It is probably the only place that I know of where radical housing advocates and more mainstream policy advocacy folks in the housing world, non-profit developers, for-profit developers, financiers and city agencies all come together to deal with this [foreclosure] crisis and what has turned into now a displacement crisis for renters and owners.”

A study of public meetings in nearly 100 Greater Boston cities showed that white people accounted for 95 percent of participants.

Fifty years ago, New Orleans razed a thriving African-American business corridor to construct an elevated expressway. Now, the Claiborne Corridor community reimagines the space below as a hub of culture, commerce and play.

Amid a patchwork quilt of segregated neighborhoods, where some areas are developing and displacing at breakneck pace, Germantown stays diverse and determined to lift up residents of all income levels.

Author Alan Mallach challenges cities to reimagine vacant properties into pocket parks, urban farms and other green space as a permanent commitment to sustainable infrastructure.