Frequent droughts, extreme heart and urbanization has forced a local gov. in India to build forests from scratch. The result has been a significant improvement in livability, and a proof of concept in how and why we should regreeen cities.
Two new parks fortifying the city’s coastline survived a bureaucratic gantlet that reveals why progress so often feels stuck.
By Michael Kimmelman and
Years of drought forced the city to rethink its water usage and, almost under the radar, to remake its identity.
By Michael Kimmelman and
California passed the nation’s first prosecutor-initiated resentencing law in 2018. Few women benefited from these laws, until now.
By
What Is the Future of George Floyd Square?
Five years after the corner where George Floyd was killed became the epicenter of a national protest movement, the future of the site is unsettled.
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Two Years in a Place Where Homelessness Ends
A reporter and photographer documented the lives of residents and staff at the Lenniger, a permanent supportive housing complex in New York City.
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What Project Is Changing Your Community?
Headway, a team at The New York Times that reports on progress and possibility, wants to hear about the efforts shaping your community. What’s working? What’s not? What should we look into?
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What’s So Hard About Building Trains?
In Florida, Brightline has proved that it can operate reliable, well-designed passenger trains that people want to ride. Can the public sector do the same?
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After a Slow Start, High-Speed Rail Might Finally Arrive in America
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Dear People of 2021: What Can We Learn From Hindsight?
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Millions More People Got Access to Water. Can They Drink It?
The U.N. pledged to halve the proportion of the world without access to clean drinking water by 2015.
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What Can One Life Tell Us About the Battle Against H.I.V.?
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Europe Met a Climate Target. But Is It Burning Less Carbon?
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Extreme Poverty Has Been Sharply Cut. What Has Changed?
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Can a Big Village Full of Tiny Homes Ease Homelessness in Austin?
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How Houston Moved 25,000 People From the Streets Into Homes of Their Own
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This Is Public Housing. Just Don’t Call It That.
Montgomery County, Md., like many places, has an affordable housing crisis. So it started acting like a benevolent real estate investor.
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The Long Emergency of Homelessness
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Interviews by Susan Shain and
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How the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike Changed the Labor Movement
The 1968 action led to greater economic mobility for Black workers. Today, union activists are trying to capture some of that spirit.
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Three Days That Changed the Thinking About Black Women’s Health
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Sentenced to Life as Boys, They Made Their Case for Release
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How Greenwood Grew a Thriving Black Economy
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Remaking the River That Remade L.A.
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How Los Angeles Learned to Save Water
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How Courts Are Rethinking Criminal Sentencing
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We asked for questions about the amazing carbon-storage capabilities of peatlands, and how these ecosystems keep the planet breathing. Readers sent us more than a thousand. Here are some answers.
Besides mosquitoes, what lives in a peatland?
We asked for questions about the amazing carbon-storage capabilities of peatlands, and how these ecosystems keep the planet breathing. Readers sent us more than a thousand. Here are some answers.
How do peatlands capture carbon, and why is it so important to the planet?
We asked for questions about the amazing carbon-storage capabilities of peatlands, and how these ecosystems keep the planet breathing. Readers sent us more than a thousand. Here are some answers.
Why can’t we create, build or plant new peatlands?
We asked for questions about the amazing carbon-storage capabilities of peatlands, and how these ecosystems keep the planet breathing. Readers sent us more than a thousand. Here are some answers.
How do we preserve or restore peatlands?
We asked for questions about the amazing carbon-storage capabilities of peatlands, and how these ecosystems keep the planet breathing. Readers sent us more than a thousand. Here are some answers.
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Headway, a team at The New York Times that reports on progress and possibility, is gathering stories and experiences from people who live or spend time near the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge.
By Terry Parris Jr.
Journalists: Got a lead? Pitch Headway through this form.
A private company, Brightline, hopes to open the first high-speed rail line in the United States. Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic of The New York Times, looks at Brightline’s passenger service in Florida and the company’s planned high-speed line connecting Los Angeles with Las Vegas.
By Michael Kimmelman, Gabriel Blanco, Laura Bult, David Jouppi and Laura Salaberry
It has become one of the most common approaches to reducing chronic homelessness for Americans with mental illness and addiction.
By Andy Newman
Places that make and prepare food have a quietly revolutionary impact on the communities around them. In a new series from Headway, we train a lens on kitchens that are sparking change.
By Matthew Thompson
It was once a vacant, weedy lot next to a school. Now, it provides fresh produce and a twice-monthly meal to customers.
By Meghan McCarron and Adali Schell
Now that the votes are almost in, the Headway Election Challenge asks teenagers for the lessons they are taking away from this election year.
By Matthew Thompson
Responses to the Headway Election Challenge paint a picture of teenagers navigating a highly charged political moment.
By Terry Parris Jr.
We’ve heard from teachers around the country about how they’re teaching the 2024 election. Here’s what students in three New York City classrooms are learning.
By Kristen Bayrakdarian and Sara Messinger
Starting in November, licensed home kitchens in Los Angeles County will be able to sell dine-in and to-go meals, as a 5-year-old state law expands.
By Meghan McCarron and Jake Michaels
The Headway Election Challenge looks to the future, asking teens about their expectations for voter turnout and election results.
By Terry Parris Jr. and Matthew Thompson
Fugetsu-Do, a mochi store in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles, has existed for 121 years, with a lasting impact on its community.
By Meghan McCarron and Jake Michaels
As the 2024 election heats up, Headway is asking teenagers to weigh in on whether today’s candidates are addressing their concerns.
By Terry Parris Jr.
Most teens who responded to the Headway Election Challenge thought a vote could make a difference, but they don’t trust the overall system to address issues that matter to them.
By Matthew Thompson
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Since September, the Headway team has been asking teenagers across the country for their thoughts on the election. Here’s what we’ve heard so far.
By Matthew Thompson
Headway has received more than 500 questions from teens about this year’s presidential election. Here are their most frequently asked questions — and our answers.
By Terry Parris Jr. and Anna Diamond
This week, the Headway Election Challenge hears from teenagers who are turning out the vote for this year’s election, and even working to pass legislation.
By Matthew Thompson
More than 400 teenagers have participated in the Headway Election Challenge.
By Terry Parris Jr.
It’s Week 3 of the Headway Election Challenge. Help us create a time capsule of this election year.
By Matthew Thompson
In Week 1 of the Headway Election Challenge, we heard from more than 200 teens.
By Terry Parris Jr.
It’s Week 2 of the Headway Election Challenge. Tell us how you sift through all the information out there.
By Terry Parris Jr.
Introducing the Headway Election Challenge, a running conversation with teenagers about their role in U.S. democracy.
By Matthew Thompson
Join the Headway Election Challenge to share your thoughts and help shape the conversation.
By Terry Parris Jr.
In 1975, New Jersey’s Supreme Court ordered every town in the state to make way for multifamily housing. It’s been a long journey.
By Roshan Abraham
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Cole Mannix, of Old Salt Co-op, is trying to change local appetites and upend an industry controlled by multibillion-dollar meatpackers.
By Susan Shain and Rebecca Stumpf
The U.S. once looked to offsite construction as an efficient way to build lots of housing and drive down costs. Sweden has embraced the idea and put it into practice. Francesca Mari, a contributor to The New York Times, breaks down the process.
By Francesca Mari, Gabriel Blanco, Ruru Kuo and Amir Hamja
The U.S. once looked to modular construction as an efficient way to build lots of housing at scale, but Sweden picked up the idea and put it into practice.
By Francesca Mari and Amir Hamja
The state has made it harder to widen highways, and transportation officials are turning their eyes to transit.
By Megan Kimble
Over the past decade, many more schools started to offer free meals to all children, regardless of family income.
By Susan Shain
An enormous amount of work is underway to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but who will pay for it?
By Lydia DePillis
In Baton Rouge, a public safety experiment could help to answer a critical question: Do community efforts to reduce street violence work?
By Mark Obbie
Headway wants to hear from people affected by gun violence and those working to end it.
By Kristen Bayrakdarian
As forests succumb to ever-fiercer wildfires, the federal government and some adventurous private companies are trying to resuscitate an industry.
By Lydia DePillis
More than any single country, Guyana demonstrates the struggle between the consequences of climate change and the lure of the oil economy.
By Gaiutra Bahadur and Keisha Scarville
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No offense, but if you’re reading this, chances are you’re not a teenager
By Kristen Bayrakdarian and Terry Parris Jr.
Some homeless shelters now offer resources so that people can squeeze in with family members. It’s an acknowledgment that entering the shelter system can lead to a downward spiral.
By Aidan Gardiner
The New York Times’s Headway team and Chalkbeat want to hear from you.
By The New York Times
The New York Times’s Headway team and Chalkbeat want to hear from you.
By The New York Times
Progress’s challenge: Our problems shape-shift in response to our solutions, which then become problems themselves.
By Matthew Thompson
Via Verde aspired to serve as a model of beautiful, sustainable subsidized housing. A decade later, our critic finds that a building can change minds, but maybe not systems.
By Michael Kimmelman
Four decades ago, 2,000 Black women converged on Spelman College for a conference on health.
By Matthew Thompson
This flood-prone city on the Hudson River balances climate infrastructure with resident needs.
By Michael Kimmelman
Fears of violence in the 1980s and ’90s resulted in life sentences for minors that are now being reversed.
By Matthew Thompson
Transformative projects don’t conform to election cycles. They’re not the work of any single person.
By Michael Kimmelman
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A cheaper, faster and more equitable approach to transit could be a path to progress in the U.S.
By Eden Weingart
Bogotá led the world with innovation in inexpensive mass transit. Its experience shows what it takes to keep progress going.
By Michael Kimmelman
This flood-prone city on the Hudson River has bundled water-absorbing infrastructure into benefits residents asked for, like parks and safer streets.
By Michael Kimmelman
Many plastics that carry the “chasing arrows” symbol, like soda cups and yogurt tubs, are rarely recycled. A new California law is raising the bar.
By Susan Shain
A lockdown-era program that gets landlords talking to tenants has had notable success for both. Can it continue?
By Aidan Gardiner
The project brought together readers, scientists and researchers who shared what they learned to help others.
By The New York Times
Jakarta, like many places, faces an unsustainable future. Indonesia’s president is responding by building a new capital city from scratch.
By Hannah Beech
As more consumers try to cut down on plastic waste, both start-ups and big brands like Clorox are hoping to usher in a new age of refillable cleaners.
By Susan Shain
Most experiences of homelessness are hidden by design, but they reveal much about how communities work, or don’t.
By Matthew Thompson and Abdul Kircher
The average U.S. household wastes nearly a third of the food it buys. This community is nudging its residents to change their habits.
By Susan Shain
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Headway wants to learn more about the people affected by this issue and the stories we should tell.
By Matthew Thompson
Buildings are responsible for nearly 40 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. In Amsterdam, they are trying to create a blueprint to do something about it.
By Jessica Camille Aguirre
Hear from Boris Johnson, the former British prime minister, and other global leaders in a livestream of the New York Times Climate Forward event during COP27 from Egypt.
By The New York Times
A decade in the works, the 11th Street Bridge Park in Washington, D.C., has yet to be built. But it could be a model for how to create public space while lessening the effects of gentrification.
By Megan Kimble and Andre D. Wagner
Homelessness bundles together so many problems: a broken mental health system, racial inequity, the affordable housing crisis. The headlines can be overwhelming. Last year I started talking with experts. They had a different view. They told me about Houston.
By Michael Kimmelman
I met Wendy Marcum last summer at The Beacon, a homeless shelter in downtown Houston. Wendy told me she was 56 years old and had been homeless for three years. I asked for her number so we could stay in touch
LUCY TOMPKINS
Scenes from one woman’s journey out of homelessness in Houston.
By Elliot Ross and Lucy Tompkins
With federal housing money in short supply, state and local authorities are looking to health dollars to help tackle homelessness.
By Lucy Tompkins
Headway wants to learn more about the people affected by this issue and the stories we should tell.
By Lucy Tompkins and Terry Parris Jr.
Dozens of scientists, academics and writers have spent their lives thinking about peatlands. But why are they so obsessed? Our “Bog Squad” has answers.
By Terry Parris Jr.
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Regenerating peatlands raises questions in the Scottish Highlands, where carbon credits could turn a stunning landscape into valuable real estate.
Compiled by David Segal
We asked for questions about the amazing carbon-storage capabilities of peatlands, and how these ecosystems keep the planet breathing. Readers sent us more than a thousand. Here are some answers.
This was featured in live coverage.
We asked for questions about the amazing carbon-storage capabilities of peatlands, and how these ecosystems keep the planet breathing. Readers sent us more than a thousand. Here are some answers.
They’re critical resources in taking carbon out of the atmosphere. What are the signs of our progress toward saving them or indications that we’re failing?
By Matthew Thompson
Repairing the country’s extensive peatlands could help the world mitigate climate change. It could also make a fast-fashion billionaire even richer.
By David Segal
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