The Fairmount Park Conservancy, Philadelphia’s largest parks-focused nonprofit, has tread perilous ground over the past several years as it leads one of the largest open space transformations in the ...

Mayor Cherelle Parker leads Philadelphia at a key point in the fight against climate change. By 2030 — that is, in a mere five years — the City hopes to have slashed municipal emissions in half and ...

Farmers are worried, but they don’t want to talk about it. Evidence is mounting that the nutrient-rich sewage sludge many have applied to their farmland for decades as a low-cost fertilizer often ...

In July 2020, after spending several months of the pandemic wondering whether her trash and recycling would be picked up, Sarah Ausprich was frustrated. When it was collected, Ausprich, a resident of ...

To the south of 86th Street in Southwest Philadelphia’s Eastwick neighborhood you can’t drive more than a few yards on the cross streets before you run into concrete barriers. “We had them put up the ...

Jay Arzu was front and center with Leslie Richards, searching for answers. He wanted to know why Philadelphia’s transit expansion had slowed to a bumper-to-bumper crawl over the years. As he watched ...

In the 340 years since Philadelphia’s founding, the city’s landscape has constantly shifted, as waves of development and redevelopment shipped out with the old and in with the new. Unfortunately, on ...

In the early 1700s, botanist John Bartram surveyed his farmland abutting the banks of the Schuylkill River in what is now Southwest Philadelphia and had an idea: build a garden for his beloved plants.

In the summer of 2023, farmers and gardeners in Philadelphia had good reason to be optimistic. The City had just published its first urban agriculture plan, called “Growing from the Root,” which ...

Our Water Matters is an ongoing series produced through an editorial collaboration of the Chestnut Hill Local, Delaware Currents and Grid Magazine. Ever since the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) ...

Tucked into a still corner of Grays Ferry, a block-spanning brick building with towering stacks overlooks the river and its walking trail. Thick steel pipes snake around the compound, carrying water ...

In the spring of 2024 the board of trustees of Parks & Rec Heroes, previously known as the Philadelphia Parks Alliance, voted to wind down the organization’s operations. Originally called Friends of ...