What do you think the Philadelphia Art Commission does? You might correctly guess that it approves works of art purchased by the City or placed on public land, along with some street signs. But anyone who has tuned into a public meeting of the commission will have noticed that the nine-member body does more than
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On a brisk and sunny March day, the dry grass of the south Whitby Meadow stood tall as a few dozen volunteers gathered with hand tools, potted shrubs waiting to be planted and bundles of live stakes — thin branches cut from black willow and silky dogwood trees intended to take root and sprout along
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On light posts around the city flyers proclaim “No Arena in the Heart of Our City,” protesting the proposal to build a new stadium for the 76ers in Chinatown. The billionaires pushing the scheme make vague promises about jobs and economic activity. The economic benefits of sports stadiums have long been debunked, but, more importantly,
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Birds can fly safer around Springside Chestnut Hill Academy thanks to third graders who installed a window film with a pattern of white polka dots. On May 11 students at the school, which partnered with Bird Safe Philly, applied the window film in an effort to keep birds from getting injured or killed in collisions
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A red-bellied turtle basking on a log next to a pocket of wetlands at Point Breeze on the Schuylkill River doesn’t know that it is threatened, legally speaking, or that its home is tiny compared to the once-expansive ecosystem that used to stretch far beyond its current territory. The controversy over a planned warehouse development
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Philadelphia is a city of old houses that offer, as anyone who lives in anything from a two-story row house to a grand Victorian knows, plenty of gaps where wildlife can slip in. Bats, flying squirrels and especially gray squirrels and raccoons can end up making a home in old crawl spaces, chimneys and in
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Many of us are committed to living sustainably, but few of us have given much thought to dying sustainably. But as with any other phase of our life cycle, the impact of our death can vary based on the choices we make. What we do with the deceased body is the obvious place to start:
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In the fall of 2020 Maria DiMauro, an artist who lives in Old City, opened her Facebook account and clicked through pictures of warblers, vireos and catbirds that had died by crashing into Center City windows. She saw more than just dead birds. The pictures had been taken on October 2, 2020 by Stephen Maciejewski,
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The Trust for Public Land has released its 2023 edition of ParkScore, which rates and compares park systems for cities across the country. Philadelphia is pretty much where it was in 2022, ranking 31 out of the 100 most populous cities in the country this year versus 32 last year. Behind that ranking are several
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The renovation of the Cobbs Creek Golf Course hit a small hurdle on May 10 as the Cobbs Creek Foundation sought approval from the Philadelphia Art Commission of the next phase of its construction, a pumphouse and reservoir for irrigating the golf course, with the commission asking the foundation to return at a future meeting
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