Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Make Way for the ‘One-Minute City'

    The Street Moves initiative in Sweden is pushing local communities to become the designers of their own streets’ layouts and look at urban planning through the lens of the “one-minute city.” Through a public-private partnership, residents in four sites in Stockholm can help determine how much street space is used for parking, outdoor dining, and children’s play spaces. The goal is to increase participation in the community, address climate resilience, and create a more livable city.

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  • These gardens ask visitors to reconsider solitary confinement

    Solitary Gardens is an art project that protests prisons' solitary confinement conditions. Incarcerated people connect with volunteers on the outside who plant flowers, vegetables, or herbs in beds matching the tiny dimensions of the prison cell that confined Herman Wallace for a record 41 years in Louisiana. The people inside prison imagine their garden, often with memory triggers of what they have lost, and their gardener carries out their plan. The idea is to make a place for grief, healing, public service, and public education, as the gardens in four cities teach about solitary confinement.

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  • Would you let someone grow produce in your yard, for food justice or for profit?

    Yard sharing is the latest urban agriculture trend enabling city dwellers to enjoy home-grown produce whether or not they have the space, time, or expertise to grow everything they want. Crop Swap LA is also starting to match people who want to grow a garden - but lack the actual yard - to people who have space but don’t have the know-how. Their goal is to transform unused space into “micro-farms,” while helping communities of color that typically don’t have access to fresh produce.

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  • This sacred bean saved an indigenous clan from climate calamity

    A community gardening project growing the guajiro bean has allowed Wayuu farmers in the Colombian desert to achieve food security despite the effects of climate change and external pressures. While scaling this agricultural success to other Indigenous clans can be difficult, using a low-tech irrigation system and red earthworm compost has allowed one settlement to feed its community and make their soil fertile again.

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  • Cities Want Green Spaces. Here's How to Make Them More Fire-Resistant

    A 20-year project by the nonprofit Lomakatsi Restoration Project to restore native plants helped to spare Ashland, Ore., from the worst destruction of a wildfire. Along the Bear Creek greenway in Ashland, the restoration project's work to replace dense thickets of invasive Himalayan blackberries with native shrubs and trees is credited with slowing the speed and severity of the Almeda Fire. Traditional firebreaks and the greenway at other points on the creek failed to slow the fire, and in some ways even sped its destruction.

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  • How a #Litterati army on Instagram sparked a global fight against litter

    What started as a small group of people taking pictures of waste in their communities and tagging it on Instagram with the hashtag #Litterati, turned into a global effort, and even an app, to map and dispose of trash. Users can upload to the app an image of trash and machine-learning algorithm can tag it location, material, and company who made it. The city of San Francisco asked the makers of the app for help documenting cigarette butts and tobacco products on its streets and ended up winning a legal victory over the tobacco industry to increase the taxes on their products.

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  • As Wilderness Areas Attract More People, Volunteer Rangers Hit The Trail

    About 40 volunteer wilderness stewards of the Idaho Conservation League are helping to educate hikers about how to be good outdoor trekkers like disposing of waste properly and staying on the trail. While these volunteers can’t legally enforce the rules, last year, they have destroyed 109 illegal campfire rings and got rid of 100 pounds of litter. These volunteers programs could be effective as other government initiative budgets are cut and more and more people are exploring nature.

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  • Local farms, small gardens see boost in interest, funding to tackle hunger

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations and government agencies are connecting farmers with people in need by making fruits and vegetables more affordable or even free. For example, Bueno Para Todos, a small farm in New Mexico, has planted new fruit trees alongside a vegetable garden, and allows people to pick what they want and pay how they can, either with money or by helping on the farm. Scaling these efforts can be difficult if communities want to encourage growing more local food.

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  • 'Money is worth nothing now': how Lebanon is finding a future in farming

    Lebanon is going through an economic crisis. According to the UN, more than half of the population is experiencing poverty. Some people are finding that the solution to their economic problems is farming. Multiple initiatives to that would allow ordinary people to farm have surfaced; food banks offering seedlings, volunteers teaching sustainable farming, and even gardens in rooftops.

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  • How a neighborhood collaborative transformed a small town

    Residents are using dollar-for-dollar matching grants to spruce up their homes in Fulton, NY, resulting in higher home values, higher morale and the formation of neighborhood collaborations. The grants are granted to entire neighborhoods with the condition that at least half the residents sign up for the challenge. The initiative strives to create a ripple effect that eventually revitalizes the city.

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