cities Archives - Good News!

TWO DAYS AWAY: National Quarterly Forum: Creating a Legacy of Public Safety in Urban Cities | Monday, 2/23, 2PM EST

Austin Tang — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 13:12:10 +0000

We are pleased to invite you uur upcoming virtual National Quarterly Forum: Creating a Legacy of Public Safety in Urban Cities on Monday, February 23rd 2PM-3PM EST. We have invited Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez (NYC) who often refers to himself as a “progressive prosecutor,” and speaks largely about his office’s efforts to prevent violence, rather than prosecute it and the nations’ second black Governor of the US, Gov. Albert Bryan, (USVI). You can register using the link [HERE] to get into the meeting room.

Together, we will explore how faith-based leadership, community partnerships, and proactive prevention efforts can shape a legacy of public safety that restores hope and protects generations to come. Our goal is clear: to move beyond temporary fixes and build a lasting legacy of safety, equity, and opportunity in our cities.

Thank you for your continued commitment to peace, justice, and community healing. We look forward to gathering with you on the 23rd.

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The Trust for Public Land revitalizes PS 197 in Brooklyn – YAYYYYYY

Austin Tang — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 20:29:17 +0000

We’re Happiest Outside

Listen to “The Trust for Public Land revitalizes PS 197 in Brooklyn – YAYYYYYY” on Spreaker.

Our organization is a national nonprofit that works to connect everyone to the benefits and joys of the outdoors.

Over 50 Years

We were founded in 1972 on the conviction that all people need access to nature and the outdoors, close to home, in the cities and communities where they live. We work with communities to create parks and protect public land where they’re needed most, as a matter of health, equity, and justice.

for more info, go to Trust for Public Land: Who We Are

#PS197

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He’s Got a Plan for Cities That Flood: Stop Fighting the Water

Austin Tang — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 19:29:01 +0000

A landscape architect in China has a surprising strategy to help manage surges of water from storms supercharged by climate change.

Kongjian Yu at his office in Beijing. “We’ve been using the conventional drainage infrastructure for 200 years and we haven’t solved the flooding problem,” he said.Credit…Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

By Richard Schiffman
Published March 28, 2024
Updated April 3, 2024

Cities around the world face a daunting challenge in the era of climate change: Supercharged rainstorms are turning streets into rivers, flooding subway systems and inundating residential neighborhoods, often with deadly consequences.

Kongjian Yu, a landscape architect and professor at Peking University, is developing what might seem like a counterintuitive response: Let the water in.

“You cannot fight water,” he said. “You have to adapt to it.”

Instead of putting in more drainage pipes, building flood walls and channeling rivers between concrete embankments, which is the usual approach to managing water, Mr. Yu wants to dissipate the destructive force of floodwaters by slowing them and giving them room to spread out.

Mr. Yu calls the concept “sponge city” and says it’s like “doing tai chi with water,” a reference to the Chinese martial art in which an opponent’s energy and moves are redirected, not resisted.

“It’s a whole philosophy, a new way of dealing with water,” he said.

Through his Beijing-based company, Turenscape, one of the world’s largest landscape architecture firms, Mr. Yu has overseen the development of hundreds of landscaped urban water parks in China where runoff from flash floods is diverted to soak into the ground or be absorbed into constructed wetlands.

Mr. Yu said growing up in a village in Zhejiang Province toward the end of the Cultural Revolution showed him how earlier generations in rural China had “made friends with water.” Farmers in his region built terraces, berms and ponds to direct and to store excess water during the rainy season.

That stood in sharp contrast to the urban landscapes in modern China. Traditionally, cities in China would set aside areas capable of absorbing floodwaters. But such nature-friendly urban design largely ended with the Industrial Revolution, Mr. Yu said. More recently, millions of acres have been paved over to build cities, some of them rising up virtually overnight.

Shanghai Houtan Park in 2006.Credit…Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

The same area in 2018.Credit…Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

“We’ve been using the conventional drainage infrastructure for 200 years and we haven’t solved the flooding problem,” he said, noting that much of China has a monsoon climate subject to extremely heavy bursts of rain that pose an increasing hazard as climate change advances. That’s because warm air can hold more moisture, resulting in heavier rainstorms.

Currently, 65 percent of urban areas in China experience some degree of flooding each year, according to Mr. Yu. The country is currently the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases. The United States is the largest historical emitter .

“The concrete drainage systems that came here from the West just can’t handle it,” Mr. Yu said. “We need a new solution.”

The sponge city program was formally inaugurated by President Xi Jinping in 2015 with pilot projects in 16 Chinese cities and has since expanded to more than 640 sites in 250 municipalities around the country.

You can see the concept in Houtan Park, a mile-long strip of greenery along the Huangpu River in Shanghai that Mr. Yu designed on a former industrial site.

Terraces planted with bamboo and native forbs and grasses are bisected by wooden walkways that zigzag between ponds and constructed wetlands. The wetlands filter water, slow the river’s flow and provide habitat for waterfowl and spawning fish.

The goal, at least on paper, is that by 2030, 70 percent of the rain that falls on China’s sponge cities during extreme weather events should be absorbed locally rather than accumulate in the streets.

Whether enough land can be converted is a key question.

Mr. Yu, who studied landscape architecture in China and at Harvard, with hand-drawn landscape designs. Credit…Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

Edmund Penning-Rowsell, a research associate at the University of Oxford who focuses on water security, said the scale of the sponge city projects would have to be huge to cope with flooding on their own. “Take New York City,” he said. “How many Central Parks would you need to absorb this kind of problem? You’d probably need half of Manhattan.”

Zhengzhou, in northeastern China on the banks of the Yellow River, was an enthusiastic early adopter of the sponge city concept, spending hundreds of millions of dollars building related projects from 2016 to 2021. But torrential rains inundated much of the city in July 2021, creating scenes of destruction and killing hundreds, including at least 14 in a subway tunnel.

Why were the floods so disastrous in Zhengzhou? Mr. Yu said some of the money earmarked for sponge projects was diverted to other programs and that the land set aside for them was insufficient. If permeable surfaces or green spaces make up 20 to 40 percent of a city’s area, he said, “you can virtually solve the problem of urban inundation.”

Niall Kirkwood, a professor of landscape architecture at Harvard who has known Mr. Yu for years, acknowledged that it can be difficult, and sometimes impossible, to convert land in city centers that have already been densely built. Still, he said, Mr. Yu’s impact as a innovator has been incalculable.

“He’s created a clear and elegant idea of enhancing nature, of partnership with nature that everyone, the man on the street, the mayor of a city, an engineer, even a child, can understand,” Professor Kirkwood said.

Where large tracts of land are not available, sponge city projects are replacing concrete and asphalt with permeable pavement, installing green roofs and creating trenches called bioswales that channel storm-water runoff and use vegetation to filter out debris and pollution.

The sponge city concept is not unique to China. One of Mr. Yu’s projects abroad is the Benjakitti Forest Park, a maze of ponds, trees and miniature islands in Bangkok that was opened to the public in 2022 and occupies more than hundred acres on the site of a former tobacco factory.

Separately, in 2007 the Dutch government began a program called Room for the River that consists of more than 30 projects around four rivers, including the Rhine. The idea is to restore natural floodplains in key areas around sites that need protection. The Danish capital, Copenhagen, is using “floodable parks” that turn into temporary ponds during heavy rains. Philadelphia and Malmo, Sweden, also have projects.

The site of Benjakitti Forest Park in Bangkok in 2020.Credit…Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

The park, which was rehabilitated by Mr. Yu’s firm, in 2022.Credit…Lauren DeCicca for The New York Times

In addition to flood control, these projects have the advantage of being an inexpensive way to recharge local aquifers and a low-tech adaptation to help overheated city neighborhoods, because evaporating water has a cooling effect.

John Beardsley, the curator of the Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, which was awarded to Mr. Yu last year, echoed Professor Kirkwood, saying Mr. Yu’s impact on policy in China, a country that has been more likely to imprison environmental activists than take their messages to heart, has been astonishing.

Mr. Beardsley attributes this to Mr. Yu’s adroit political skills and infectious enthusiasm, as well as the Chinese government’s powerful incentive to appear to be addressing the problem of urban flooding, which has grown alarmingly in recent years.

“Kongjian has managed to be very critical of the government’s environmental policies while still maintaining his practice and his academic appointments,” he said. “He’s both brave and deft in this regard, threading a very narrow needle.”

“Sponge cities isn’t a total solution, but it makes a significant impact,” Mr. Beardsley said. “I mean, we need to start doing something.”

Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

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“National Faith Leaders Response To Mass Killings”

Austin Tang — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 13:12:38 +0000

Good Afternoon,

I hope this email finds you well. Thank you again for attending the “National Faith Leaders Response To Mass Killings” meeting yesterday. If you were unable to attend or missed the meeting, please CLICK HERE to watch a replay on YouTube. To keep up with the latest information from Clergy For Safe Cities, you can also follow us on Twitter.

If you are in the New York area, please join us on Monday, June 6th, 2022 at 6:30 PM in Alliance Tabernacle (formerly Clarendon Road Church) as faith leaders across the nation join their collective voices to reflect and give consideration to the need to end gun violence and stop the hate. Please see the flyer below for more information.

#faithleaders #masskillings #youtube #clergyforsafecities #twitter #june6th #june6 #alliancetabernacle #clarendonroadchurch #collectivevoices #endgunviolence #stopthehate

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International Cities of Peace “Classic Good News” 04/07/14

Austin Tang — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 13:29:19 +0000

Listen to “International Cities of Peace” on Spreaker.

#international #cities #peace #living

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2021’s Best & Worst Cities for Basketball Fans – WalletHub Study

Austin Tang — Thu, 27 May 2021 15:51:15 +0000

Listen to “2021’s Best & Worst Cities for Basketball Fans – WalletHub Study” on Spreaker.

With the NBA playoffs kicking off on May 22 and the NBA recovering from a 50% revenue drop last year due to COVID-19, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2021’s Best & Worst Cities for Basketball Fans, as well as accompanying videos.

We speak to Jill Gonzalez of Water hub, Dr. Larry Gluck and Austin G.-S. Tang also share their thoughts. A Good News time was had by all.

To find the best cities for professional- and college-basketball fans, WalletHub compared more than 290 of the largest cities across 21 key metrics, ranging from the performance level of each city’s NBA and NCAA Division 1 basketball teams to ticket prices to stadium accessibility.

Best Cities for Basketball Fans
Worst Cities for Basketball Fans
1. Los Angeles, CA
283. Santa Clara, CA
2. Boston, MA
284. Berkeley, CA
3. Salt Lake City, UT
285. Evansville, IN
4. Philadelphia, PA
286. Wilmington, NC
5. San Francisco, CA
287. Daytona Beach, FL
6. Miami, FL
288. New Britain, CT
7. San Antonio, TX
289. Montgomery, AL
8. Houston, TX
290. Pocatello, ID
9. Washington, DC
291. St. George, UT
10. Oklahoma City, OK
292. Stephenville, TX

Best vs. Worst

Charlotte, North Carolina, has the lowest average ticket price for an NBA game, $32.05, which is 3.9 times less expensive than in San Francisco, the city with the highest at $125.43.

The Houston Rockets have the highest performance level among NBA teams, 68.34 percent, which is 2.3 times better than that of the New York Knicks, the team with the lowest at 29.31 percent.

The Gonzaga Bulldogs have the highest performance level among college basketball teams, 89.87 percent, which is 8.3 times better than that of the Chicago State Cougars, the team with the lowest at 10.85 percent.

Miami has the highest fan engagement for NBA teams, 43.40, which is 30.6 times higher than in New York, the city with the lowest at 1.42.

To view the full report and your city’s rank, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-cities-for-basketball-fans/11034 (https://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-cities-for-basketball-fans/11034)

https://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-cities-for-basketball-fans/11034

#best #worst #fans #basketball #cities #sports #football #covid #pandemic #nba #uniforms #teams #revenues #traditions #stadiums #tickets #costs #college #ncaa #winners

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The Barat Foundation Animodules On the road to 10 US cities in battleground states with The Seed Evolution

Austin Tang — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 00:54:52 +0000

The Barat Foundation’s Animodules® are proud to join forces with Angela Del Sol and The Seed Evolution’s journey to 10 US cities across battleground states amplifying voices of Black, Indigenous, Latinx and allies to inspire change. A documentary of the journey will be created.

SEED EVOLUTION

GOFUNDME is live and we need your support! We are pioneering a renaissance rooted in reconnecting with hope and creating a new legacy. In chaos comes great creation. The time to activate is right now.

SEED EVOLUTION

POP-UP SCREENINGS & PUBLIC ART ACTIVATIONS

October 17th, 2020 – November 3rd, 2020

DONATE NOW

Seed Evolution is a community based movement to amplify voices of Black, Indigenous, Latinx and allies to inspire change.

We will produce pop-up rallies in 10 US cities across battleground states along the East Coast activating and engaging with underserved communities in the final weeks leading up to the 2020 general election. We will feature prominent community organizers, artists and activists in high energy, visually immersive in public spaces and cultural institutions.

SEED EVOLUTION

POP-UP SCREENINGS & PUBLIC ART ACTIVATIONS

October 17th, 2020 – November 3rd, 2020

DONATE NOW

Thank you for all you do to make our community a better place!

Warmest Regards,

Chandri Barat

‌ ‌

Barat Foundation | 2 Center Street, Newark, NJ 07102

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2020’s Happiest Cities in America

Austin Tang — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 14:37:58 +0000

With March 20 being International Day of Happiness and with the aim to find out whether money really does buy happiness, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2020’s Happiest Cities in America as well as accompanying videos.

In order to determine where people in America are most content with their lives, WalletHub compared more than 180 of the largest U.S. cities across 30 key indicators of happiness. The data set ranges from depression rate to income-growth rate to average leisure time spent per day.

Top 20 Happiest Cities in America
1. Fremont, CA 11. Bismarck, ND
2. Plano, TX 12. Fargo, ND
3. San Jose, CA 13. Lincoln, NE
4. Irvine, CA 14. San Francisco, CA
5. Madison, WI 15. Overland Park, KS
6. Sioux Falls, SD 16. Santa Clarita, CA
7. Huntington Beach, CA 17. Oceanside, CA
8. Scottsdale, AZ 18. Glendale, CA
9. Santa Rosa, CA 19. Anaheim, CA
10. Pearl City, HI 20. Cape Coral, FL

Key Stats
• Miami, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale and Pembroke Pines, Florida, all have the lowest depression rate, 12.50 percent, which is 2.3 times lower than in Charleston, West Virginia, the city with the highest at 28.90 percent.

• Laredo, Texas, has the lowest number of suicides per 100,000 residents, 4.78, which is 7.3 times lower than in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the city with the highest at 34.80.

• Fremont, California, has the lowest separation & divorce rate, 15.06 percent, which is 3.2 times lower than in Detroit, the city with the highest at 48.13 percent.

• Overland Park, Kansas, has the lowest share of adults sleeping less than 7 hours per night, 25.60 percent, which is two times lower than in Detroit, the city with the highest at 50.10 percent.

• Cheyenne, Wyoming, has the lowest average commute time, 14.40 minutes, which is 2.9 times lower than in New York, the city with the highest at 41.20 minutes.

To view the full report and your city’s rank, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/happiest-places-to-live/32619/

Please let me know if you have any questions or if you would like to schedule a phone, Skype or in-studio interview with one of our experts. Feel free to embed this YouTube video summarizing the study on your website. You can also use or edit these raw files as you see fit. Full data sets for specific cities are also available upon request.
#happiest #cities #america #international #day #happiness #money #wallethub #wallet #hub #income #growth #leisure #time #fremont #plano #san #jose #irvine #madison #sioux #falls #huntington #beach #scottsdale #santa #rosa #pearl #city #bismarck #fargo #lincoln #francisco #overland #park #clarita #oceanside #glendale #anaheim #cape #coral #miami #hialeah #fort #lauderdale #pembroke #pines #laredo #cheyenne #youtube #videos

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International Cities of Peace

admin — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 20:31:07 +0000

LATEST POSITIVE NEWS from the global association International Cities of Peace, headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, one of over seventy cities of peace. Association members promote and work in their communities toward greater safety, prosperity, and quality of life — the consensus values of peace around the world.

NEW PARTNERSHIP… DUBAI, U.A.E.: CITY OF PEACE
A partnership has formed between International Cities of Peace and the Paris-based Peace Without Limits (PWL). Founder Saif Mohamed Bin Helal Al-Shehhi of Dubai (photo shown) established a prophetic vision: “Development through peace, however without limits, considering the various humanitarian heritages we will form higher bridges of communications among different nations which will lead us to a true human globalization that can assure true freedom and dignity for Humanity.” Mr. Saif and his colleagues have done many humanitarian projects around the world and we look forward to many projects together in Dubai and beyond .Dubai: City of Peace

ICP GLOBAL FAMILY PROJECT SUCCESS! Two Red Beads, One Human Heart
Thanks to our donors, ICP’s pilot program to help a group of women in Bujumbura, Burundi who have experienced sexual violence from war, only to have their families ostracized and stricken with hunger and homelessness. International Cities of Peace has provided seeds for gardens, leases for housing, fees for their children to go to school, and medicine for their wounds and disabilities. This one-to-one peace building goes directly to those in need. Other cities of peace are considering forming a Global Family Project to make a global impact. Contact us if you want to help with donations. Thanks to all!
Support The Global Family Project

NEW GLOBAL CITIES OF PEACE.AMAZING PROGRESS!• Accra, Ghana: City of Peace
VISION: We are dedicated to fostering Peace as a cherished value that must be at the heart of institutions of state and in the hearts and minds of humankind towards achieving a stable, sustainable and harmonious global coexistence.
Accra, Ghana: City of Peace• Monrovia, Liberia: City of Peace
VISION: A Just Society that is Self Sustaining for Helping Others
Monrovia, Liberia: City of Peace• Benghazi, Libya: City of Peace
VISION: We seek to see all cities in Libya embracing the Gracious Project under the umbrella of Gracious Land which aims at establishing positive change on a general perspective and to promote the culture of positivity, simplicity, and conflict resolution instead of hardening up and choosing to be part of an issue or challenge.
Benghazi, Libya: City of Peace

• Lubumbashi, D.R. Congo: City of Peace
VISION: The World Peace Foundation is actively involved in the awakening of the individual and collective consciousness for the efficient and massive participation of the Congolese population in the process of raising children, adolescents and adults (men and women) to a culture of peace, non-violence, justice, … for peaceful coexistence and good governance in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo: City of Peace

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