This is a guest post written by Michael Anthony Nutter, former mayor of Philadelphia. The Fairmount Park system is one of Philadelphia’s greatest assets, with more than 11,000 acres of greenspace spread across nearly every area of the city. It is a mecca for big events and a refuge for small moments of quiet. Fairmount
“With access to nature, we have real racial disparity in our city. If you are a middle-class kid, your parents or scout troop are making sure you have positive outdoor experiences. This is not the case for a kid struggling with not having enough food and the trauma of everyday life,” said St. Louis Mayor
Whether you are a municipal leader thinking of ways to solve city challenges or looking to support existing youth programs, look no further. NLC’s partners at the Wallace Foundation have put together a Summer Learning Toolkit that local leaders can share with program providers to develop and strengthen high-quality summer learning programs. Cities play a
This is a guest post by Alejandra Pallais, who provides communications support to the Children and Nature Network (C&NN). City leaders interested in getting more young people outdoors and connected to nature can now apply to the 2019 Cities Connecting Children to Nature (CCCN) Leadership Academy in Denver. The Leadership Academy is a fully subsidized
Three years ago, the first Detroit Outdoors campers in Scout Hollow admired a pair of Red Tail Hawk parents feeding their chick nestled in a huge nest perched in a tall Sycamore Tree. The hawks’ vantage point gave them a commanding view of the 5-acre meadow and Detroit’s only campground, which had been unused for
I recently met with a councilman from SeaTac, a small city in the inner-ring suburb of Seattle that boasts about 30,000 residents. As a new councilman in the middle of his first term, Peter Kwon initially asked a lot of questions. And like many of our city leaders and their staff, Councilman Kwon was already
This is guest post by Bill Eller, vice president, business development at HomeServe. Skilled trades are the future of work. A combination of Baby Boomers reaching retirement age and lack of interest by young adults in the skilled trade field has caused an unprecedented labor shortage. It’s estimated that, for each person who enters the
This is guest post by Bill Eller, vice president, business development at HomeServe. Ever the trailblazer, California’s first city, San Diego, also was the first city in California to embrace the NLC Service Line Warranty Program, entering into a partnership in June 2012. As the Preferred Service Line Warranty Partner of the City of San
This is a guest post by Ellyn Parker, project manager for the 2018 Rose Fellowship team. This is the second blog in a three-part series about insights from a study tour of Toronto by NLC’s 2018 Rose Center Land Use Fellows. Last month, NLC’s Rose Center Land Use fellowship team braved the cold temperatures of
Across the ages and in every culture, childhood has included time playing in and exploring the outdoors. Yet over the last few generations, childhood has moved indoors, leaving kids disconnected from the natural world. To combat this challenge, the NLC Institute for Youth, Education, and Families and Children & Nature Network (C&NN) launched the Cities Connecting
