How to Design a Street for Hands-Off Play

Tiny homes are a growing solution to homeless veterans and vulnerable youth, especially those who identify as LGBTQ. But the movement faces challenges from regulations and neighbors across the nation.

For a megacity with more than 18 million people in its metro area, Mumbai, India is not a particularly vertical city. Many of its inhabitants squeeze into low-rise slums crammed into the urban space. But an ongoing slum rehabilitation program seeks to clear these corrugated metal shacks and relocate the slum-dwellers to new high rises.

Mitigating homelessness on Los Angeles' infamous "Skid Row" comprises myriad obstacles. But a collaboration between city officials, a USC architecture class project, and the Skid Row Housing Trust has responded with a multi-pronged solution in "pod-style" housing units. They have composed a cost-effective pre-fab design technology that eases their transportation, on-site construction and visual imposition on a neighborhood, while the pods' zoning classification as "congregant housing" minimizes the risk for local opposition to homeless support services on claims of structural or aesthetic noncompliance.

Feeding the raccoons in Montreal’s Mount Royal Park was a tourist activity promoted by websites and supported by park vendors selling cat food. When the result was overpopulation of raccoons unafraid of people, steps were taken to protect the raccoons including banning vendors and educating tourists about their impact.

When Cristo Rey St. Martin College Prep, one of a national network of work-study high schools, was looking to move out of an outdated building, an abandoned big box KMart caught administrators' eyes. Strapped by a tight budget, the school creatively transformed the suburban eye sore into a colorful cross between a corporate headquarters and a college campus. Inspired by the school's success, other network schools are looking into vacant factories and grocery stores as new homes.

The Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique has repopulated its large mammals by over 700 percent through collaborations between wildlife authorities and nonprofits. With millions of dollars in philanthropic assistance, the park’s revival is made possible by supporting and using local and indigenous knowledge, as well as taking a whole-community approach that provides services for those towns around African national parks. Such philanthropic approaches to conservation are part of a larger, global trend taking place in countries around the world.

The focus on sound comes at a time when open kitchens and industrial hard-surface designs entice diners’ eyes, but might strain their ears.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a New Deal program to build outdoor recreation facilities, creating thousands of jobs during the Great Depression and building iconic state parks. Delaware programs, like the Senior Corps that enlists the help of people over 55, encourage civic engagement modeled after the CCC. Pennsylvania's Outdoor Corps hires young people to restore public lands over the summer. Congress introduced bills to revive CCC-like initiatives that could support rural economies hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, but environmental funding is not a priority of the current administration.

A partnership between Minnesota’s state parks and libraries in low-income communities is providing free entry passes to the parks to allow those who could not otherwise afford to visit a chance to do so.

The nonprofit Coombs Outdoors runs summer and winter camps for youth to experience and learn about the outdoors. The camps are in high demand because of the affordable price made possible by donor subsidies.