Meet the Goodmans: Las Vegas’ Flamboyant Political Family, Governing
Did you know the Strip — with its high-rolling casinos and debauched dance clubs — isn’t actually within Las Vegas’s city limits? It’s technically on Clark County’s turf. The timeworn battle between city and county is playing out in the Nevada desert, as a husband-and-wife pair who’ve held the mayor’s office for a collective 17 years try to remake the city’s downtown, gambling their future on a performing arts center, a med school and a pro sports team.
High-Rise Greens, The New Yorker
In 2003, Ed Harwood, a 66-year-old inventor from Ithaca, N.Y., sketched out designs for a seemingly impossible idea: a compact vertical farm, where produce could grow without any soil, sunlight or more water than a fine mist. Today, his grow tower has been perfected and adopted by AeroFarms, a company in Newark, N.J., whose indoor agriculture aims to compete with California’s kale, bok choi and arugula farmers.
Did Free College Save This City? Christian Science Monitor
For every graduate of the Kalamazoo, Mich., school system — rich or poor — a group of anonymous donors has guaranteed scholarships to cover the cost of college tuition. The 11-year-old educational experiment, known as Kalamazoo Promise, has revived the district public schools and fostered a college-going culture in this frozen Rust Belt city that’s trying to transition to the digital economy.

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