Once the city takes over operations of the hotels at the end of this year, it intends to convert the units for “permanent supportive housing,” a form of affordable housing that provides subsidized rent and social services, health care, counseling and other supports. The city plans to partner with a nonprofit provider to offer services to residents in the two buildings.
Called the Gran Manupare Integrated Management Natural Area, the law was overseen by, and passed for the benefit of, “peasants and indigenous communities,” per a statement from the mayor’s office. Located in the Pando Department in the far northern corner of Bolivia, the new protected area represents almost 8% of its forests and has significantly increased the region’s conservation coverage to 26%. In the past 25 years, Bolivian towns like Sena have protected 10 million contiguous 25 million acres of Bolivia’s Amazon—an area nearly the size of Iceland.
The city’s new Bicycling Rewards Program aims to encourage community members to ride a bike instead of driving. The program comes as a response to the city’s lagging climate goals. According to Denver Streets Partnership, transportation was responsible for 30% of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2018, and this incentive is part of a larger research project to see what motivates locals to ditch their cars.
Miami-Dade county is set to receive nearly $20 million from the Environmental Protection Agency to help cover the costs of 50 new electric school buses and 16 DC fast chargers, bringing the public school district’s total to 100 electric buses. Miami-Dade county is one of four school districts selected to receive a total of $33,175,000 through the EPA’s first Clean School Bus Program’s Grants Competition.
Over the past several years, U.S. cities and states have passed hundreds of policies restricting the sale and distribution of single-use plastic bags. A new report – copublished by Environment America, U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, and Frontier Group – says these laws have largely succeeded in their goal of reducing plastic bag use. New Jersey’s ban alone has eliminated more than 5.5 billion plastic bags annually.
The city is working with RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit that buys medical debt in bulk from hospitals and debt collectors for pennies on the dollar. The group targets the debt of people with low incomes or financial hardships and then forgives the amounts. Under the program, the city will spend $18 million over three years.
A long-awaited suicide prevention barrier at the Golden Gate Bridge has been completed, marking the culmination of a tireless campaign by families who lost loved ones at the famous structure. Crews had been working to finish installing stainless steel nets on both sides of the bridge before a promised 2024 deadline.
With the opening of a new micro-community in northeast Denver, Mayor Mike Johnston estimated over 1,100 hundred people will have been housed before the end of 2023. “As of yesterday, this city succeeded, in under six months, in moving more than 1,000 people off of the streets and into housing,” he said.
The new Bus Rapid Transit system is one of the key components of an ambitious strategy for sustainable urban mobility. It will help improve air quality in Dakar and reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, with around 59,000 tonnes of CO2 avoided per year.
Initially, a Ford E-Transit fitted with a receiver will be used to gather data as part of a five-year pilot to perfect the technology in real-world settings and study potential public transport applications – though there are plans to open the electric road system to the public within the next few years.
