What’s more important, jobs or health? The question nominally sits at the heart of the struggle to ban smoking in casinos in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, covered by Rebecca McCarthy in this issue. The people who work at casinos say they should not have to breathe tobacco smoke at work, since that can lead to
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Despite having a balky knee, mayoral candidate James DeLeon forgoes the inconveniently located elevator and takes the stairs to our third-floor office. DeLeon needs a minute to rest his knee, and he mentions that he first injured it decades ago on the basketball court, landing badly after a slam dunk. Though I never scaled those
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Don’t give up on Philadelphia just yet. Our centuries-old city has big problems, including the legacy of lead. It’s in our paint, our pipes, our bloodstreams. When it gets in our children, it hurts their young brains’ development, negatively affecting learning and behavior. With the district-wide installation of hydration stations — filtering units that remove
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Whether it’s the shame of encountering trash dumped in your neighborhood, the despair of seeing a littered landscape or the outrage of witnessing recyclables and trash being dumped into the same truck, everyone who lives in Philadelphia eventually feels the psychological toll of mishandled waste. It makes all of us feel helpless, and then, the
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It was almost 15 years ago that Van Jones wrote his book “The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems,” and not quite four years ago that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey introduced the outline for the Green New Deal. The green economy was the holy grail, but now in
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Yes, this is our food and farming issue, but it’s so much more. When we launched the 2030 Series in April, our goal was to focus each month on a single topic through the lens of sustainability. The themed issue is a tried and true convention for editorial, but when it comes to sustainability, the
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Hello Readers, Bernard Brown submitted this essay to Grid, and I thought it made for a perfect introduction to the new issue. I’ll be back next month! AM I swim laps at the West Philadelphia branch of the YMCA, on Chestnut between 51st and 52nd. My walk there takes me across Walnut Street, often on
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I’ve been grappling with Vaclav Smil’s provocative book, “How The World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going.” Smil, a professor at the University of Manitoba, has written dozens of books on big topics including population, food and energy, usually with scientists or public policy professionals in mind. This
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When it comes to how the City manages public land, the deck is stacked. When the City leased the Cobbs Creek Golf Course to the Cobbs Creek Foundation, a West Conshohocken-based nonprofit, for $1 for 30 years, there were no competing bids. There was no discussion about how people in the community might like to
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I’d been hearing about the South Philly Meadows for some time, so I finally paid a visit. I biked from Center City — a very manageable 29-minute ride — and started to wander. The sound of traffic on Pattison Avenue began to fade with every step into the open, unplanned expanse, and the birdsongs grew
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The City of Philadelphia is not serious about climate change. Yet many people who work for the city are incredibly serious about it. They are dedicated, talented and passionate civil servants. Leadership, on the other hand, is lacking. The result is a mishmash of positive programs trying to methodically tackle the challenges we face colliding
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