Planning & Growth

"The complex, contradictory and heartbreaking process of American climate migration is underway."

"With just over six months before the election, at least one major Biden proposal appears to be stalled: an update to the federal housing rules that agency experts estimate would save homeowners nearly three times more money on energy bills than it would add to construction costs, spread out over a 30-year mortgage."

"Using satellite imagery and data on dozens of factors — including air and noise pollution, park space, open water and tree canopy — NatureQuant has distilled the elements of health-supporting nature into a single variable called NatureScore. Aggregated to the level of Census tracts — roughly the size of a neighborhood — the data provide a high-resolution image of where nature is abundant and where it is lacking across the United States."

"Albania’s Vjosë River is known as Europe’s last wild river, and its pristine delta is a haven for migratory birds. As plans for luxury developments there — spearheaded by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — move ahead, conservationists are sounding the alarm."

"Worldwide over the past 35 years, dams and land reclamation activities have converted 250,000 acres of estuary — an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan — to urban land or agricultural fields, with most land conversion and estuary loss in rapidly developing countries, a new study finds."

"The Biden administration unveiled on Tuesday the first-ever national plan for decarbonizing the nation’s residential and commercial buildings sector. The plan calls for a 90% reduction in carbon emissions from buildings by 2050."

"Innovation and policy changes are urgently required to tackle climate-warming emissions from the cement sector, with an infrastructure boom in developing countries set to drive up production for decades, a research group said on Thursday."

"The natural gas industry pulled off an 11th-hour victory in its campaign to strip climate-friendly rules out of the latest update to the homebuilding guidelines used in most of the United States."