Demographics

coffee and social change

Cafe de las Sonrisas in Granada, Nicaragua was established to break down the barriers that deaf and mute people typically face in integrating into the labour market.[read more]

post-Kantamanto Market fire

Now would be a perfect opportunity to develop a design solution that formally integrates market vendors’ and their activities into the overall economy; to work with those trading at markets like Kantamanto, rather than working against them.[read more]

Toronto/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Canadian geographic immobility should serve as a cautionary tale for places trying to attract people. Catalyzing migration is hard to do. The reasons behind declining mobility in the United States remain a mystery.[read more]

Buffalo, NY

“Buffalo gentrification” is an oxymoron. It’s also real, close to the centers of talent production. We should pay more attention to this emerging economic geography hidden in the stereotypical Rust Belt.[read more]

public transit

Friends told me I could easily get a house. But I didn’t want to increase my carbon footprint by moving into a bigger house just because I could afford it. And I was not going to drive to school everyday to study Sustainability.[read more]

affordable housing

San Francisco voters passed Proposition C, establishing a city-wide affordable housing fund on the enormous margin of 31 percent. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.[read more]

talking limits of Arctic resilience

The Arctic is in the spotlight like never before. Yet most discussions of the Arctic fail to consider how changes in climate, ecosystems, economics, and society interact.[read more]

solar-powered water pump

Can solar power help eradicate extreme poverty in the developing world? As we’ve shown a number of times, many social entrepreneurs think so, and are investing their time and money in a variety of technologies.[read more]

Braddock, outside Pittsburgh

When the numbers go down, the assumption is brain drain. The problem is lack of brain gain. But locals won’t hear of it despite the preponderance of data stating the contrary.[read more]

2013 Index

Ever wondered where you need to live in order to be considered unusual if you don’t ride to work? To have urban planners fighting over how to make the city as friendly a place as possible for you, the cyclist?[read more]

Rust Belt foodies

Talent leaving Chicago would skip over the Rust Belt and land in a coastal metro. Over the last decade, that pattern has changed as native daughters and sons returned home after cutting their teeth in a Big City.[read more]

Jaime Lerner

The architect and urban planner Jaime Lerner – former Mayor of Curitiba for three terms and former Governor of Paraná for two terms – regards large urban center problems with a unique point of view.[read more]