As hundreds of golf courses close, nature gets a chance to make a comeback

Huge numbers of students lack the chance to go to college because of financial problems. Recently, Kalamazoo schools received more funding allowing them to have the chance to help and pay for students to then go to college and receive a higher education.

York schools are considering changing public schools into charter schools, following the example of New Orleans and Michigan, in order to help their crumbling school system. The privatization of these schools can help the facilities become more financially stable, in turn preventing school closures and instability for their students.

Civic leaders in the U.S. struggle to effectively help their distressed neighborhoods. East Lake, Atlanta, created a replicable model that mixes residents of differing socio-economic status, and focuses on education and health in the area.

After incarceration, Black men and women have a difficult time re-integrating into society without financial and educational resources. A former Black Panther activist has created the non-profit Oakland &the World Enterprises to offer an urban farm as a prisoner re-entry program and community center. The Oakland project supports self-sufficiency, self-determination, and empowerment for Black people.

A Dallas urban neighborhood was dilapidated with abandoned storefronts and offered no vitality for pedestrians. A group of artists and community members created Build a Better Block, in which local artisans and small businesses took over a vacant block and transformed it for a limited time to encourage the ingredients for more permanent urban renewal.

The Oak Cliff neighborhood in Dallas suffered from recession-closed businesses and crime. Then community members used placemaking, in which people shaped their own environment to improve the quality of life, and the concept of Build a Better Block, which was a pop-up event showcasing art, food, music, and local faire. The idea gives citizens a fresh look at the possibilities through which to transform the space in which they live, and it has attracted attention across the country and around the world.

Colombia’s National Development Plan for cattle ranching seeks to reduce pasture land from 94 million acres to 70 million acres while increasing cattle numbers from 23 million head to 40 million. The program focuses on planting trees on grazing land and the "cut and carry method," whereby farmers grow fields of shrubs and distribute the fresh cuttings to cows in pastures. The result is greater cattle productivity and a more eco-friendly farming system.

In Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood, an organization called Save Our Streets Crown Heights (S.O.S.) is taking steps to disrupt violence. The organization is modeled after Chicago's violence interrupters, which employ people from the neighborhood to connect with those most at-risk and disrupt conflicts and retalitory violence.

Despite strong evidence that school-based physical activity improves children’s cognitive skills, concentration, and behavior, schools under pressure to produce quantitative results and decrease bullying have drastically cut back on recess in recent years. An Oakland-based nonprofit organization called Playworks is working to make healthy play accessible for more children and show schools how productive recess can be to the whole academic world.

Alleys in Seattle were once places of illicit, illegal, and unsanitary activity. The International Sustainability Institute in Seattle began organizing music and art events to bring in people, which, in turn, cleaned-up the crime and garbage. As an urban development strategy, adjacent vacant storefronts re-opened for business and beautification could be seen in new gardens.