sustainability

Too many people are forced to choose between paying to heat and cool their homes or paying for medicine, food and other necessities.

Book Review: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

It’s not unusual to read a press release from a governor’s or mayor’s office celebrating a deal to bring a new company to a neighborhood or city. Typically we’d be talking about a new manufacturing or tech firm, and the press release would speak glowingly of the prospects for economic development. Which makes a bit […]

It was a bright, sunny day in Chicago on September 24. Celebrants were singing, “You Are My Sunshine,” as the solar panels had already saved $64 since the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) in the US had started them up just a few hours earlier. With 483 panels, each producing 310 watts, ICA’s 166,000 square […]

We spoke with Tom Szaky, TerraCycle’s founder and CEO, about social enterprise, locating in a distressed community, and what he as an employer would want out of workforce development programs.

At the Farm Pond Circle Reforestation Community in South Lansing, N.Y., a small community outside of the small city of Ithaca, N.Y., we believe that Mother Nature is pretty upset. […]

Having just come back from two weeks in Japan, my brain is still overflowing with sensations and images from that fascinating, exciting, and intermittently mystifying country. (I won’t subject Rooflines […]

The Resilience Imperative: Cooperative Transitions to a Steady-State Economy, by Michael Lewis and Pat Conaty. New Society Publishers, 2012, 400 pp., $26.95. I must admit that until now resilience was […]

Shelterforce hopes that all of our colleagues and friends in Hurricane Sandy's path are staying safe. We know that given your work, you are probably concerned not only for yourselves […]

There has been a steady rising interest in urban agriculture over the past several years—from urban farms to community gardens to backyard chickens. Some of this is coming from concern […]

My friend Eliot Allen first introduced me to the concept of neighborhood completeness: that the quality of a place is defined in part by how many different functions it has […]

Shelterforce speaks with Shelley Poticha, director of HUD’s Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, about implementing sustainable policy at the federal level while encouraging local innovation, keeping down the cost of green housing, and effecting change while dealing with federal government bureaucracy.