Philadelphia’s weather is downright tropical in the summer, but that can be hard to remember in January as residents crank up the heat and dread the monthly heating bills. PECO’s residential heating rate takes out some of the sting for households that heat with electric power. PECO’s “RH” rate, as they label it, “is designed
More
“Nothing’s quite as sure as change,” goes an old song by The Mamas & the Papas. Change, though certain, is hard to predict. Things sometimes go the way you want them to, other times the opposite direction, and often somewhere in between. Here in our 200th issue, we look back at some of the stories
More
Joseph Nguyen, 27, lives in South Philly and holds a 2020 Temple University degree in international business. But if you ask him what he does, the answer is much more nuanced. “I live three different lives,” he says. Nguyen performs audits for government and corporate clients, competes as a Muay Thai martial artist, and runs
More
Within days of a police raid in the home he shared with his parents in Krasnodar, southern Russia, Ilia Chernov, 26, a computer programmer and system administrator, went into hiding. Over five years, “I was subjected to repeated questioning, threats, police surveillance and house searches due to my political views and activism,” says Chernov. A
More
Jeff Strahley, of Red Bank, New Jersey, spent an early November afternoon riding along the Delaware Canal towpath near Washington Crossing Park in Bucks County. He has mixed feelings about the increased e-bike presence on the popular trail. “There’s good and bad. The good is it gets more people out on the trails that might
More
In September 2008, George W. Bush was president, the dominant fuel source for U.S. electricity generation was coal, and the Paris Agreement was seven years away. Much has changed in the commonwealth and the country since Grid spoke with The Energy Co-op for our first issue. Founded in 1979 by members of Weavers Way Food
More
In 2008, Philadelphia had 205 miles of bicycle lanes. By 2021, that had expanded to nearly 300 miles of bike lanes across the city. But most of those, even today, are nothing more than a stripe of paint — and as John Boyle, research director for the Bicycle Coalition points out, “paint isn’t protection.” With
More
Modern construction is notorious for producing waste. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the amount of used soil abandoned to landfills. What’s needed is a cost-effective, environmentally responsible solution that keeps material in circulation and preserves its value. “Every day, thousands of tons of soil come off construction sites in and around Philadelphia.
More
The streetlights lining Baltimore Avenue have been aglow for nearly two hours when Books Through Bars begins to bustle. Volunteers, stepping in from the stony November cold, come to support an often overlooked cause: providing reading material to people in prison. Incarcerated individuals often have little to read, and the range of books provided to
More
Welcome to issue #200! I spent a lot of time over the past few weeks flipping through the pages of our debut issue. It may sound somewhat self-aggrandizing, but the first Grid was released as a prototype — not an actual issue — because the concept for a sustainable city magazine had no precedent. (Come
More