• Metro officials consider more subway surveillance, while others wonder if that move’s a good use of scarce transit funds.
• LA-area schools get gardening, with some help from Urban Farming, a nonprofit org working to eradicate hunger by planting food crops on unused land in urban areas.



• Private operation of public places: Bryant Park — where I used to read once in a while when I lived in NYC — is supported entirely by commercial sponsors and fees. The fear is that commercially-supported parks will limit room for political activism and shortchange less wealthy neighborhoods. “As soon as you ask a park to pay for itself, you will not have parks in poor neighborhoods,” says one activist. [image by Eric Konon]
• A comprehensive campaign to reduce the Bay Area’s reliance on global markets in favor of a more locally based economy. A bunch of groups, including Redefining Progress, Bay Localize, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), the International Forum on Globalization, and the Center for Sustainable Economy, are behind the campaign.

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