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The horrific wildfires sweeping through Los Angeles right now are a fresh reminder of how vulnerable our cities are to the climate crisis. We’re looking back at some of our top stories examining the strategies and solutions that center equity and climate resilience; grassroots efforts to hold polluters and extractive industries to account; and the communities of color on the frontlines of the fight for clean air, water and land.
Alongside editor’s favorites, we’ve included the most-read stories of the year. All of these articles showcase Next City’s mission to deliver solutions journalism that explores how to build more equitable cities.
For more, see our most popular stories across the board for 2024. Or check out our annual Solutions of the Year magazine, an 80-page print edition highlighting 2024’s 24 best ideas for making liberating cities from systems of oppression.
Where Fire Back Means Land Back
After a 19th-century treaty left them landless, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians is reclaiming their ancestral lands – and their traditional practices of cultural burning, after decades of federal fire suppression policies have led to wildfires that burn larger, hotter and out of control.
In an era of climate change, government agencies across the U.S. are increasingly recognizing the need to actively apply traditional ecological knowledge to mainstream land management practices — balancing these institutions’ often short-term, extractive values with an intergenerational perspective. — Ashli Blow for Next City and Yes! Magazine, September 2024
The Decades-Long Fight To Protect Kettleman City
In June 13, 2013, Waste Management’s 1,600-acre Kettleman Hills Facility’s recent hazardous waste permit — which allowed it to hold up to 15 million tons of toxic materials — expired. Owing to a quirk in California law, the landfill has carried on as normal since.
“The county supervisors here see Kettleman as a forgotten landscape of just simple farmers and farm laborers who don’t deserve the same amenities that the county seat has,” says Miguel Alatorre, the third generation of environmentalists in his family to advocate against the landfill. “We have 200 registered voters. Why would anyone pay attention to places like us anywhere in the country?” – Christopher Harress for Next City and Reckon, October 2024
The Case for Returning Disaster-Prone Areas Back to Nature
Each year, wildfires trigger a predictable sequence of events: the fires burn, homeowners flee, firefighters battle the blazes often to catastrophic loss and, once the ash settles, people rush to rebuild grander homes, frequently in the exact same spots and typically directly or indirectly funded by taxpayer dollars.
We’ve been here before, and we’ll be here again. The same areas will burn, the same areas will flood. It’s time we acknowledge a universal truth. Through fire, flood, extreme heat and other disasters, nature is telling us in no uncertain terms: “You shouldn’t live here.” It’s time that we listen. – Jonathan Rosenbloom, September 2024
Why America Needs Public Wind Power
New York State was in the news this winter after announcing new contract agreements for two major offshore wind developments. Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled the project awards with great fanfare, saying, “I promised to make New York a place for the renewable energy industry to do business, and we are delivering on that promise.”
But as experts in environmental issues, offshore wind energy and engineering, we believe the public in New York has been strongarmed by big wind companies. Beneath the awards is a story of crisis in the offshore wind sector in the Northeast United States. – Ashley Dawson, Bridget Moynihan and Desen S. Özkan, April 2024
Africatown Is Still Trying to Breathe
When Walter Moorer looks down Chin Street in Africatown, he remembers the names, homes, businesses, moments and lives that have long since moved on from this historic community founded by formerly enslaved Africans in Alabama’s port city, Mobile.
Already facing industrial pollution plus a dwindling population, many residents believe plans to develop nearly two additional miles of rail line through Africatown won’t reduce their suffering, as leaders of the second fastest-growing port in the country claim, according to state planning documents.
Instead, residents contend that the Chickasaw Railroad Lead Line is a sign of what many have been fighting against for decades: more industrial expansion, more pollution, and more threats to their well-being. “The port and these other companies would love for Africatown to disappear,” Moorer says. “Maybe it will.” – Christopher Harress for Next City and Reckon, March 2024
This City Covered Up a Contaminated Park For Decades. Now What?
On a summer day, the 12 green acres of Bingham Park would be the perfect place to play. Instead, it’s blocked off by a chain link fence. That’s because Bingham Park is a cover-up — literally.
Between the 1920s and 1950s, the site served as an incinerator and landfill for waste from the U.S. military and Guilford County. Landfills weren’t lined back then, allowing for a host of adverse compounds to leach into the site’s soil and groundwater. Then, in the 1970s, the city covered up the landfill and called it Bingham Park.
Until April of this year, the park was open with precautions. After new EPA guidance around acceptable lead levels in soil dropped in January, the city closed the park three months later and put up the fence. City Council will soon decide the future of Bingham Park, which could impact the health and wellbeing of thousands of Black and low-income Greensboro residents for generations to come. – Marielle Argueza and Gale Melcher for Next City and Triad City Beat, July 2024
The Land Trust Helping India’s ‘Slum-Dwelling’ Women Design Climate-Resilient Homes
Summer in Ahmedabad, India was never easy for seamstress Meenaben Soni, who struggled to work in her tin-roofed home as temperatures regularly hit upwards of 104 degrees Fahrenheit for months at a time.
In 2016, Soni chanced upon the concept of “cool roofs” at meetings organized by the Mahila Housing Trust, an Indian nonprofit that works with low-income women to build climate-resilient homes. The group helped them replace their tin roofs with the organization’s modular roofing system, ModRoof. Seven years since first raising a loan to invest in a ModRoof, the temperature of Soni’s home has decreased by about 11 degrees. — Sabah Gurmat, January 2024
The “Bank Black & Green” Campaign Is Funneling Millions Away From Fossil Fuels and Incarceration
Since the Paris Agreement went into effect, 60 of the world’s largest private banks have funneled $6.9 trillion to the fossil fuel industry. Despite a wave of banks pledging to no longer finance the private prison industry between 2019 and 2021, many others are still funding the two largest U.S. private prison companies that have relied on bank loans to operate and expand.
Tackling such global financial systems can seem impossible, but not when you talk to Stephone Coward, head of the Bank Black & Green campaign, an effort to funnel capital into Black-owned banks that commit to not funding the fossil fuel or mass incarceration industries.
With the $35 million that investors have committed to the campaign already, Coward hopes to bolster the tradition of Black-owned banks supporting BIPOC communities’ needs, from public health to sustainability. – Cinnamon Janzer, December 2024
A White Couple Donated 80 Acres in an Act of Reparations. Now It’s Becoming a Home for Black Farmers
Two years ago, the Central Virginia Agrarian Commons received an 80-acre land donation as a form of reparations from white Amelia County residents Callie and Dan Walker. Now, the group’s board chairman Duron Chavis is working with the couple to turn their family land into a refuge for Black farmers and other farmers of color.
The property, a portion of which currently serves as a family farm, will eventually become a multi-functional space where Black farmers can live, work and grow their agricultural enterprises — without needing to go into debt. – Barry Greene Jr., November 2024
Urban Farms Are a Lifeline For Food-Insecure Residents. Will New Jersey Finally Take Them Seriously?
Emilio Panasci of the Urban Agriculture Cooperative says it’s no coincidence that urban farms located in and around Essex County, New Jersey’s seven food deserts get little to no municipal support.
“Consumer food access mirrors our patterns of segregation in this country, and that is a political as well as economic choice,” says Panasci. “It’s no accident that outside of a few struggling small farms and pop-up markets in the South Ward of Newark, there is very little if any high-quality, fresh food options - and those are available at premium prices - in our neighboring Maplewood or South Orange.” – Kimberly Izar for Next City and The Jersey Bee, July 2024