Nashville Is Training a New Generation of Leaders from Its Immigrant Communities, Citiscope
In 2009, a Nashville councilman proposed a ballot initiative to prevent bureaucrats from speaking anything but English. Voters defeated the nativist measure, and “Nashville has not looked back,” the former mayor says. Today, the Southern city picks leaders from immigrant communities and introduces them to various government institutions like the courts, schools and water treatment plants, in the hopes that some will one day run for local office.

Street Furniture that Helps Fight Pollution and Save Lives, Co.Design
Living near one of New York City’s ambulance stations could, paradoxically, be detrimental to your health. While parked, the emergency response vehicles leave their engine running nonstop to power their radios and refrigerate medicines, coughing out exhaust for hours. An energy startup has been tapped to place slender, metallic charging pedestals throughout the city, allowing ambulances to run their battery through an automatically retractable plug, while decreasing street pollution at the same time.

F.D.A. Agrees to New Trials for Ecstasy as Relief for PTSD Patients, The New York Times
For an average of 17 years each, a group of South Carolina patients — military veterans, rape survivors and emergency responders — had tried to get over their post-traumatic stress disorder. Neither prescription drugs nor psychotherapy worked. But the recreational drug MDMA, or Ecstasy, did. Now, a clinical trial of at least 230 patients will test whether the illegal party pill should be classified as a medical cure for the symptoms of trauma.