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‘What's at stake is the life of every being': Saving the Brazilian Cerrado

Peter Yeung

February 11, 2021 |

Mongabay |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Brazil

The National Campaign in Defense of the Cerrado coalition of Indigenous peoples and organizational partners is fighting political challenges to preserve the region’s native vegetation and biodiversity. The Cerrado is a tropical savanna In Brazil that is home to about 5 percent of the planet’s animal and plant species, yet only 3 percent of the land is under “strict protection” regulations. Pressure from the campaigners has led to a public hearing and proposal with more than 500,000 signatures to declare the region a World Heritage site.

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PPE for the People

Kathrin Yaromich

February 10, 2021 |

Transitions Online |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Belarus

During the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, volunteers across Belarus worked together to collect and deliver personal protective equipment to frontline workers, despite the Belarusian government denying the spread of the coronavirus. Using social media to organize, the volunteers "served as a kind of SWAT team able to bypass the bureaucracy to obtain the necessary equipment."

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How Sweden is taking back parking spaces to improve urban living

Richard Orange

February 08, 2021 |

The Guardian |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: Sweden, Gothenburg

A pop-up public space was installed in Gothenburg, the latest in a Swedish experiment that’s looking at how to transform parking spaces on city streets into community areas. Previous installations of the experiment, known as the “one-minute city,” in Stockholm were received positively and other cities have expressed interest in the project.

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Plan to beautify 50 vacant lots falls short nearly two years later

Manny Ramos

February 07, 2021 |

Chicago Sun-Times |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Chicago, Illinois

Since June 2019, Chicago's Grounds for Peace pilot project has begun cleaning up vacant, city-owned lots using an approach to urban beautification that has been shown in other cities, and in one Chicago neighborhood, to reduce crime and boost residents' feelings of safety. While the city and its contractors consider the project a success in the making, thus far only two of the original 50 targeted lots show signs of improvement. Project leaders blame funding shortfalls, disruptions due to the pandemic, and difficulties in removing abandoned vehicles.

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The Next Best Thing

Ilyne Junuén Castellanos

February 05, 2021 |

Voices of Monterey Bay |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Monterey Bay, California

Efforts aimed at recruiting student poll workers, some of whom aren’t yet eligible to vote, increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Monterey County ran registration drives, spoke in classrooms and other student-oriented events, and participated in California’s High School Voter Education Weeks, ultimately recruiting 107 students. The Georgia Youth Poll Worker Project used social media to recruit 1,000 young poll workers across the state. The organization is compiling “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Starting a Poll Worker Project” to help other organizations similarly recruit and train young poll workers.

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An Architecture Firm's Push to Build Net-Zero Apartments—on a Budget

Russell Gold

February 05, 2021 |

Wall Street Journal |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Apartments at Front Flats, a new residential building in Philadelphia, is powered by 492 solar panels that are wrapped around the building. The point: to demonstrate that developers can design buildings that are energy-efficient and be built at an affordable cost. It’s not clear yet if the building is “net zero” in terms of producing as much energy as it consumes, but residents are paying only $40 a month for utilities.

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Nature calling: how can Sweden's success story help rewild London?

Matthew Ponsford

February 05, 2021 |

The Guardian |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Sweden, Malmö

As London starts to implement its plan for boroughs to implement sustainable urban greening strategies, officials look to Malmö as a guide after the Swedish city used a green space factor (GSF) as a way of calculating green space requirements for new developments. The GSF system allows governments to integrate biodiversity-focused incentives into their urban planning, while allowing designers and architects to respond to local needs.

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How residents are working to make Ramapuram a better place to live in

Bhavani Prabhakar

January 27, 2021 |

Citizen Matters |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: India, Ramapuram

Active civic participation by residents and associations, such as the Ramapuram Social Welfare Federation, supports the identification of civic problems and escalation to the appropriate authorities. When the local lake, key to the city’s groundwater supply, was developed and polluted, the federation got local authorities to intervene and stop building on the lake bed. They also filed a lawsuit demanding the lake be restored and all people evicted from the area. The federation worked through official channels to covert land into a public use park and established an urban forest with rich biodiversity.

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Is D.C. Finally on the Brink of Statehood?

Nora Caplan-Bricker

January 27, 2021 |

The Washington Post |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Washington, District of Columbia

51 for 51 is an advocacy group fighting for DC statehood by educating people about DC residents’ taxation without representation and training advocates in other states, mostly young people, to lobby their senators to support a statehood bill. Organizers also bird-dogged democratic presidential candidates for a public pledge of support for statehood, which 18 did. The group has also gained new support for ending the filibuster, which is needed to pass a statehood bill in the Senate. Support for statehood is at its highest, with a bill passing the House of Representatives for the first time in June 2020.

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St. Louisans Mapped Monuments of Their City, and Uncovered Surprising Connections

Lyndsay Knecht

January 27, 2021 |

Next City |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, St. Louis, Missouri

When the Public Iconographies project asked people in St. Louis "how would you map the monuments of St. Louis?", it got 750 hand-drawn maps telling stories of often-overlooked sites throughout the city. By letting people from the community determine what is important, the project ended up with a data-filled report channeling freeform responses. They included the spot where a Ferguson police officer killed Michael Brown, the site of a 1917 race riot, and Cahokia Mounds, a pre-Columbian site in the city. The project formed a counterpoint to efforts to remove problematic symbols, like a Columbus statue.

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