headway
Hawaii’s Tiny Homes Offer a New Model of Disaster Recovery
After Lahaina burned in August 2023, the state invested in a modular home development, hoping to nurture community and leave behind permanent infrastructure.
By Issie Lapowsky and
Headway
Exploring the world’s challenges through the lens of progress.
Highlights
Credit How a District in India Came Together to Plant 15 Million Trees
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.
Credit - critic’s Notebook
Can a 3.5-Acre, $296 Million Park Save Lower Manhattan?
Two new parks fortifying the city’s coastline survived a bureaucratic gantlet that reveals why progress so often feels stuck.
By Michael Kimmelman and
Credit For the Future of Water Conservation, Look to … Los Angeles?
Years of drought forced the city to rethink its water usage and, almost under the radar, to remake its identity.
By Michael Kimmelman and
CreditAdali Schell for The New York Times
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.
By Ernesto Londoño and
Credit 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.
By Andy Newman and
CreditThea Traff for The New York Times 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?
By
CreditThe New York Times HeadwayWhat’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?
By
CreditRose Marie Cromwell for The New York Times headwayAfter a Slow Start, High-Speed Rail Might Finally Arrive in America
True high-speed rail has not yet made it to the U.S., but that will change soon. Here are the projects currently being developed.
By
CreditEden Weingart Headway
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Hindsight
More in Hindsight ›Dear People of 2021: What Can We Learn From Hindsight?
For the first series from the Headway initiative, we followed up on forecasts from decades past to ask what the passage of time has revealed.
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CreditMike Haddad 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.
By
CreditMike Haddad What Can One Life Tell Us About the Battle Against H.I.V.?
In 2001, U.N. estimates suggested 150 million people would be infected with H.I.V. by 2021. That preceded an ambitious global campaign to curb the virus. How well did it work?
By
CreditMike Haddad Europe Met a Climate Target. But Is It Burning Less Carbon?
The European Union promised to reduce its emissions 20 percent by 2020. Did it happen?
By
CreditMike Haddad Extreme Poverty Has Been Sharply Cut. What Has Changed?
The U.N. pledged to cut by half the proportion of people living in the worst conditions around the world.
By
CreditMike Haddad
Housing
More in Housing ›Can a Big Village Full of Tiny Homes Ease Homelessness in Austin?
One of the nation’s largest experiments in affordable housing to address chronic homelessness is taking shape outside the city limits.
By Lucy Tompkins and
Credit How Houston Moved 25,000 People From the Streets Into Homes of Their Own
The nation’s fourth-largest city hasn’t solved homelessness, but its remarkable progress can suggest a way forward.
By Michael KimmelmanLucy Tompkins and
CreditChristopher Lee for The New York Times 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.
By
CreditJustin J Wee for The New York Times The Long Emergency of Homelessness
If we understood the loss of housing as a collective challenge engulfing our communities, how would it guide our response?
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CreditElliot Ross for The New York Times 30 People Tell Us What Homelessness Is Really Like
Packing groceries, bathing in fountains, finding comfort in an orange blanket. Explore people's stories and their answers to common questions.
Interviews by Susan Shain and
CreditLauren Tamaki
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Progress, Revisited
More in Progress, Revisited ›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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CreditErnest C. Withers, Sr., via Withers Family Trust Three Days That Changed the Thinking About Black Women’s Health
Forty years ago, Black women convened to discuss how race affected their health. They helped reimagine what medical care could look like.
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CreditPhoto Illustration by Alanna Fields; Photograph, via Spelman College Archives Sentenced to Life as Boys, They Made Their Case for Release
At age 17, Donnell Drinks was one of many young men in Philadelphia who went to prison for life without parole. Today, the city has resentenced more of those prisoners than any other jurisdiction.
By Issie Lapowsky and
CreditAbdul Kircher for The New York Times How Greenwood Grew a Thriving Black Economy
W.E.B. Du Bois saw the key to Black prosperity in places like Tulsa, where Black residents patronized Black stores. Even today it serves as a model.
By
CreditGreenwood Cultural Center/Getty Images The Elusive Quest for Black Progress
Many measures of Black achievement in the U.S. have stalled or reversed. A series from Headway looks back at historical gains for their lessons today.
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CreditW.E.B Du Bois via The Library of Congress
Headway and The New York Times Magazine
More in Headway and The New York Times Magazine ›Remaking the River That Remade L.A.
Over the past century it has been channeled, subdued, blighted. Is it time for the Los Angeles River to serve the city in a new way?
By
CreditAdali Schell for The New York Times After years of destructive weather that have disrupted Puerto Rico’s food supplies, new visions of local agriculture are taking root.
By
CreditMaridelis Morales Rosado for The New York Times Architects Plan a City for the Future in Ukraine, While Bombs Still Fall
Irpin was one of the first Ukrainian cities to be destroyed and liberated. Now it’s becoming a laboratory for rebuilding.
By
CreditMichal Siarek for The New York Times In an Age of Constant Disaster, What Does It Mean to Rebuild?
Each catastrophe is a test of what kind of society we’ve built. And each recovery offers a chance, however fleeting, to build another.
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CreditJamie Chung for The New York Times. Concept by Pablo Delcan. Prop stylist: JJ Chan. Can a National Museum Rebuild Its Collection Without Colonialism?
After a fire destroyed thousands of Indigenous artifacts, the curators of this Brazilian museum are adopting a radical new approach.
By Mariana Lenharo and
CreditLuisa Dörr for The New York Times
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Dear Headway
More in Dear Headway ›What Hawaii’s Tiny Homes Reveal About the Housing Crisis
They show the promise of modular construction in response to housing shortfalls.
CreditBrendan George Ko for The New York Times How to Make Water Conservation a Habit
Small, everyday actions to minimize water use add up the more people do them.
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CreditAdali Schell for The New York Times How Los Angeles Learned to Save Water
And why the metropolis still has a lot of room to improve water usage.
CreditAdali Schell for The New York Times How Courts Are Rethinking Criminal Sentencing
One effort to revisit overly tough sentences came from an unlikely source: prosecutors.
CreditMichelle Groskopf for The New York Times
Peatland Questions?
More in Peatland Questions? ›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.
Credit 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.
Credit 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.
Credit 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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TimesVideoL.A. Could Have Enough Water ... If It Has The Will
Facing drought after drought, Los Angeles has managed to reduce its water use by more than a third, even as the population has grown. Michael Kimmelman, editor at large of Headway, a team focused on paths to progress on big challenges, reports.
By Michael Kimmelman, Karen Hanley, Gabriel Blanco and James Surdam
Live, Work or Hang Out Near Gotham Park? We Want to Hear From You
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.
HeadwayPrison Reform Left Women Behind. Then Prosecutors Stepped In.
California passed the nation’s first prosecutor-initiated resentencing law in 2018. Few women benefited from these laws, until now.
By Issie Lapowsky
What Is the Future of George Floyd Square?
Five years after the site became central to a national protest movement, its fate is unsettled.
Dear HeadwayLife After Chronic Homelessness
Two years of reporting at a permanent supportive housing building in New York show the successes and limitations of the approach.
Dear HeadwayBack to the Future of Transit
How high-speed rail went off track in the U.S., and where it’s finally coming to fruition.
- Headway
Pitch to Headway: What’s Your Big Idea?
Journalists: Got a lead? Pitch Headway through this form.
TimesVideoWhy the U.S. Does Not Have High-Speed Rail (Yet)
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
HeadwaySix Things to Know About Permanent Supportive Housing
It has become one of the most common approaches to reducing chronic homelessness for Americans with mental illness and addiction.
By Andy Newman
Kitchens Are a Force for Social Change
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
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