City People Do-It-Themselves

As cities go hands-off, locals are taking their city's wellbeing into their own hands -- from community gardens to grassroots efforts to reuse abandoned neighborhoods.

"So, we have cities doing by default what urban planners could never do. Greener cities, yes. More open spaces in what were once ruined neighborhoods. Healthier, perhaps, even with the pall of economic desperation. Part of an ecosystem, housing units no longer defined exclusively by city lots and housing walls.

But at the same time, cities are turning impersonal – with eye-on-the-people enforcement."