A new Shelterforce article reveals that concerns about school overcrowding - a common argument against affordable housing development - contradict actual enrollment data showing widespread declines across U.S. school districts.

In many cases, proposed affordable housing projects faced opposition due to school capacity concerns, including Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where voters rejected a major affordable housing development partially due to school overcrowding fears. However, nationwide data shows K-12 enrollment is projected to drop by 8% between 2019 and 2030, with many districts already experiencing significant declines.

In California's Coachella Valley, where an ambitious 10,000-unit affordable housing initiative is underway, local school districts report continued enrollment decreases rather than overcrowding. One district has lost over 2,000 students since 2018, while another operates at just 75% capacity.

• The enrollment decline stems from multiple factors, including:
• Falling birth rates since the 2008 recession
• Broad demographic shifts
• COVID-19 impacts on public school enrollment

School administrators note that declining enrollment threatens school funding and stability, with many districts actively seeking more students. As Adam Bosch of Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress states in the article, "We should be on our knees praying for a hailstorm of children to fall from the sky."

• Housing Development
• Schools
• Community Development
• Affordable Housing

The battery-electric revival of the classic VW microbus is finally here. The Volkswagen ID.BUZZ concept debuted at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January 2017. Nearly eight years later, the production models are only just now reaching US customers and reviewers.

Volkswagen is betting that customers have a long memory, judging from their decision to echo the styling of the first-generation VW bus of 1949-1987. On American streets, the ID.BUZZ’s throwback styling is polarizing, but the percentages are solidly in favor of the design, with the love/hate ratio about 75/25 percent. Feelings were strong both ways, but if people love the neo-hippie bus’s design by 3:1, that’s a slam-dunk win for the VW styling department.

Alas, a driver’s next impression comes from the experience of tugging on the door handle. The ID.BUZZ, unlike many EVs, has physical door handles instead of electric door release buttons. That’s great, but when the handle is released, the door produces a tinny drumming sound in the disappointingly cheap-sounding manner of most Nissan vehicles.

I had the good fortune to get a sneak preview for Popular Science two years ago when I spent an afternoon in a five-seat, two-row European market ID.BUZZ, with its shorter wheelbase and slightly different specifications from this 2025 US-market ID.BUZZ. The fundamentals I noted at that time remain in place: My tested Cherry Red/Metro Silver three-row, seven-seat ID.BUZZ remained tall and bouncy, though as hoped, the US model’s longer wheelbase provides a slightly better ride than the Euro model.

Now, as then, stiff springs supporting a heavy battery pack combine with a tall vehicle to emphasize body motions. EVs are prone to aggravating motion sickness because of the abrupt acceleration and deceleration and the ID.BUZZ’s bounciness makes this even worse. 

If the ID.BUZZ offered a high level of regeneration when the driver lifts off the accelerator for true golf cart-style one-pedal driving this problem would be even worse, so it is probably fine that its regeneration is relatively light.

Step on the accelerator–it is the one marked with the right arrow to look like a “play” button–and the ID.BUZZ can apply as much as 335 horsepower through all four wheels to accelerate to 60 mph in 6.0 seconds. The tested ID.BUZZ Pro S Plus was a 282-hp rear-drive, single-motor model whose acceleration was…fine.

Rear-seaters feeling bothered by motion sickness will struggle for relief by opening the window for fresh air, as the style-first VW bus lacks normal windows that slide down into the door. Instead, there’s an inset window segment that slides sideways in the manner of a pickup truck’s sliding rear window. This probably won’t provide the benefit a motion-sick passenger seeks.

Opening the windows is also a nuisance because of Volkswagen’s use of a terrible capacitive-touch switch to select whether the two physical window switches on the driver’s door operate the front-door windows or the rear-door windows. Reach for the switches and your hand is apt to brush against the capacitive-touch switch that changes from the windows you intend to operate, typically the front ones, to the ones you don’t mean to open. Then you press the switches and the windows don’t seem to open because the rear ones slide open instead. 

This is one user interface frustration that plagues VW vehicles and it is overdue for fixing considering that we’ve been troubled by this switchgear since the ID.4 EV debuted. Another is the volume control. Most drivers prefer audio systems that use a conventional rotary volume knob. Volkswagen’s volume slider with its little finger-supporting tray at the base of the screen is just too annoying to use.

The ID.BUZZ carries a 91 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack that provides a 231-mile driving range for the dual-motor, all-wheel-drive model while the single-motor, rear-drive vehicle I tested is rated at a virtually identical 234 miles. While you’d expect the more powerful model to have a more noticeably short driving range due to higher energy consumption, those dual motors provide a correspondingly greater regeneration under deceleration to nearly equalize things.

Another constant between the US and Euro-spec is the height of the VW’s floor, as the company’s MEB electric platform stores the battery pack beneath the floor. The result is that the floor is a much higher step-in compared to minivans. At 22 inches, the ID.BUZZ’s floor is SUV height and more than four inches higher than the climb into a van.

VW says that ID.BUZZ buyers are mainly coming from SUVs, so this may not matter, with only 3 percent of buyers coming from other sliding-door minivans. Considering the vanity aspect of an ID.BUZZ purchase, it makes sense that sensible van drivers aren’t highly represented, despite the fact that the VW is a van.

As with SUVs, the ID.BUZZ’s high floor has a high rear cargo deck. There’s a raised platform in the rear cargo area to provide a surface that is level with the second- and third-row seats when they are folded. That makes it easier to slide large objects into the VW, but a minivan with seats that stow away in the floor has a much lower surface for loading bulky objects.

As with the seating, SUV drivers will probably not realize what they are missing, while minivan owners probably won’t be shopping for the ID.BUZZ because they aren’t interested in trading away their vehicles’ practical advantages for the VW’s head-turning styling. 

No matter what style vehicle shoppers are coming from, they’ll surely be puzzled by the ID.BUZZ’s driving position. Both front seats are so far from the door-mounted armrests that even with my 35-inch sleeve gorilla arms, I couldn’t comfortably use them. VW realizes that, so they’ve mounted outboard armrests on the front seats. That means you can fold down an outside armrest to match the one on the inside. 

This works fine while you’re driving, but once you arrive at your destination if you forget to flip the outside armrest up before exiting the van you’ll get a sharp jab in the ribs for your forgetfulness. This probably won’t score well in customer satisfaction scores when the J.D. Power surveys go out.

A cool feature on the outside of the ID.BUZZ is a flip-down hitch receiver. Most of the time it stows up under the bottom of the van. When you need it, pull the red handle and the 2-inch receiver and the trailer lighting connector flip down 90 degrees, ready for the drawbar with a tow ball to hitch your trailer. It has a 2,600-lb. towing capacity, which makes it suitable for towing dirt bikes, personal watercraft, or maybe a small, single-axle camper.

The bus’s steering is good, with a remarkable 31.5-foot turning circle diameter that makes the vehicle easy to maneuver through tight parking lots and into spaces meant for compact cars in an age of hulking SUVs parked on either side. When you want to let VW do some of the work, the ID.BUZZ’s Travel Assist hands-on steering assistance system works pretty well, though I found that seems a little over-caffeinated turning into corners, frequently clipping the apex with an inside tire touching the paint line on the edge of the lane. 

The LED headlights are first-rate, with adaptive front lighting that bends the beam into corners and what VW calls “Poor Weather Lights” (aka fog lights) for better visibility. A night drive on the winding Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park put these lights to the test, providing the chance to show the system’s excellence. Of course, onlookers only notice the glowing white “VW” emblem on the ID.BUZZ’s flat face. 

That drive to and from the mountains saw estimated driving range plummet during the climb to the top and then give all those miles back on the return leg. The low, 35-mph speed limit in the park aided the driving range, but the majority of my driving was on highways outside the park at normal highway speeds.

Over 255 miles, the ID.BUZZ consumed 90 percent of its estimated driving range, showing 10 percent remaining when I returned home after traveling 20 miles past its predicted range. VW says the bus will recover from that level to 80 percent in 26 minutes using a charging station that can provide its maximum of 200kW. They also promise that the intelligent battery conditioning system will ensure that you actually get that result, but no other EV ever seems to charge at the claimed rate so if this is true it will be the first. I plugged it into my ChargePoint 9.6 kW Level 2 AC home charger and recharged it overnight instead of paying a premium at a DC fast charger.

The price for this retro-futuristic tribute to the Woodstock generation (of cars) is dear, but it is in line with the bottom line on other EVs. The base price for the tested rear-drive Pro S Plus model is $63,495, and the as-tested price, including destination charges, came to $66,040. 

This is a lot, but it sits solidly within the price range of the Kia EV9 electric SUV, which is comparable in many respects. The pragmatic alternative is the plug-in hybrid Chrysler Pacifica minivan, which lets you drive on electric power in your daily routine and only needs gas for road trips, because that vehicle can cost $20,000 less.

But as VW’s market research shows, no one is cross-shopping a plug-in minivan. They want a battery EV and they want the ID.BUZZ’s hippie heritage. That is, if they have a good enough memory to recall that long ago.

The post The future-retro VW microbus is finally here—quirks and all appeared first on Popular Science.

Voters in Everett, Washington approved a ballot measure that gives the Snohomish River the legal right to “exist, regenerate, and flourish,” reports Katie Surma for Inside Climate News.

According to Surma, “Everett’s referendum is part of the fast-growing rights of nature movement that has cemented into law rights of individual species and ecosystems. The laws are aimed at preserving the integrity of the natural world and have been enacted in more than a dozen countries, including Spain, Ecuador, Colombia and New Zealand.”

The law paves the way for city agencies, residents, and organizations to sue polluters on behalf of the river. As Surma explains, “Rights of nature laws tend to provide a higher level of protection than conventional regulations, which typically regulate the pace and amount of pollution allowed. Rights of nature laws flip that concept on its head. They can require that it is better to avoid risks to ecosystems that could lead to irreversible damage, absent scientific evidence that shows the risks are manageable.”

• Everett
• snohomish river
• Rivers
• Ecology
• Watersheds
• Rights of Nature
• Conservation
• Pollution

1. Open the Settings app on your ‌iPhone 16‌.


2. Scroll down and tap Display & Brightness.


3. Look for the Camera Control section.


4. Toggle on Require Screen On.

The League of American Bicyclists issued its list of most bike-friendly states, with Washington and Massachusetts topping the list. The top five are rounded out by Oregon, California, and Minnesota.

As Dan Zukowski explains in Smart Cities Dive, “The League ranked states on the basis of five actions it advocates every state to take, said the organization’s policy director, Ken McLeod. These are centered around bicycle infrastructure, safety, funding, planning and laws.”

The report assesses state-owned roads, which see the highest number of fatalities for people biking and walking. “The biggest difference between the best-ranked states and those at the lower rungs is whether they have specific planning around bike safety and update their plans every 10 years,” McLeod said.

While most states are still spending less than 2 percent of federal transportation funds on bike and pedestrian infrastructure, New Hampshire improved its ranking by spending more than 2 percent and creating a new bike plan. “The report calls out Kansas for improving its ranking more than any other state and three states — Maine, Oklahoma and South Carolina — for adopting or planning to adopt their first statewide bike plans.”

• Bike Infrastructure
• Bikes
• Bike Safety
• Cycling
• Road Safety
• Traffic Safety

• League standings now include ways to track which teams have qualified for the postseason and which have been eliminated.


• Quickly catch up on scoring plays and big moments in a game with Key Plays—a new Play-By-Play tab.


• When available, soccer and baseball game pages now include pregame lineups.


• Schedule a Live Activity for any game on the Today tab to automatically get a real-time scorecard on your Lock Screen when the action starts.

Apple Sports is a free app available in the App Store.Tag: Apple Sports
This article, "Apple Sports App Updated With Key Plays, Pregame Lineups, and More" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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They say the most thoughtful gifts are the ones someone will put to use every single day. If you know someone who fell short of their 2024 goal of reading or learning more, you could help them reach that resolution in the new year by surprising them with Headway Premium.

Instead of watching them attempt (and potentially fail) to read a 300-page book each month, make their self-improvement journey so much more sustainable—and more fun—with Headway. This app is designed to summarize books into short tidbits with the main ideas and bigger insights. Order this Headway lifetime subscription now to get it for 80 percent off!

Imagine how excited they’ll be to tackle a new book when you treat them to Headway—they might actually reach their 2025 reading and learning goals, and all they need is 15 minutes of their day to enrich their mind.

Headway offers 1,500+ nonfiction book summaries (like Julia Fox’s and Al Pacino’s autobiography) and some fiction ones (like To Kill a Mockingbird). As they keep up with reading or listening to Headway’s book summaries, they’ll be able to rate them so the app learns what your interests are. From there, it’ll offer personalized book recommendations that will keep them interested in their reading journey.

Want to give Santa Claus a run for his money? Check out now to secure a lifetime of learning for someone special this holiday season!

It’s tough to keep up with long-term goals, which is why Headway gamifies their learning journey. They’ll be able to complete challenges, collect achievements, and keep a learning streak to stay motivated—they might find themselves continuing their self-improvement journey for life.

This season, give the gift of sustainable daily learning. Go straight to checkout to grab a Headway lifetime subscription for just $59.99. Supplies are limited, and this offer ends December 22 at 11:59 p.m. PT!

StackSocial prices subject to change.

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The post The gift that could help them keep up with their 2025 self-improvement goals appeared first on Popular Science.

The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) is asking the Georgia state legislature to allow it to use automated traffic enforcement cameras to keep cars out of the city’s first bus-only lanes, reports Sara Gregory for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The agency says enforcement is necessary to make its new bus rapid transit (BRT) lines successful and reliable. “MARTA officials have said previously they don’t think using law enforcement to ticket is a good use of police resources. They’re proposing mounting cameras to the front of buses that could catch the license plates of any offenders.”

MARTA officials are proposing a six-month ‘warning-only’ period before beginning to enforce fines. “Violations would never result in arrests. Any revenue from fines would go back to the jurisdiction where the violation occurred.”

• Atlanta
• MARTA
• Public Transit
• Bus Rapid Transit
• Bus-Only Lanes
• Bus Lanes
• Automated Traffic Enforcement
• Traffic Cameras

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In an op-ed in Streetsblog NYC, Shabazz Stuart argues that a proposed e-bike registration bill would be ineffective.

Stuart writes, “I’ve spent most of my career managing public space at the city’s third-largest Business Improvement District and championing the creation of a regional secure bike parking and charging network with my company, Oonee. As such, I can promise that if this bill becomes law, not only will it fail to achieve its own stated goals, it will stand alone as one of the most regressive urban transportation policies of the 21st century.”

Stuart notes that bike advocates have for decades been calling for more protected bike lanes and other infrastructure that makes it safe for people to ride e-bikes on city streets and not on sidewalks. Requiring all powered bikes, scooters, and other devices including motorized wheelchairs to be registered would be “expensive, difficult to enforce, prejudicial and practically useless.”

Other cities that have attempted bike registration programs have ended them, Stuart points out. “Registration mandates are notoriously difficult to enforce at almost every level of government. The federal government intended Real IDs to be the FAA standard in 2008, but the program suffered from low compliance, even with the full muscle of state DMVs and the specter of not being able to fly. Today, only 56 percent of Americans have converted, 19 years after the original goal of 100 percent.”

• New York City
• E-Bikes
• Bikes
• E-Bike Registration
• Bike Registration

Archeological discoveries can reveal the brighter sides of humanity. Collecting tchotchkes, our ancestors potentially comforting or sheltering one another in the face of a cataclysmic disaster, or building owl toys for children show how caring we can be as a species. However, other findings can reveal our darker side.

That more bleak part of human nature can be found in the bones uncovered from an archeological site in Charterhouse Warren, Somerset, England. A team recently analyzed over 3,000 bones found there decades ago that date back to the Early Bronze Age. The remains of at least 37 individuals here were killed, butchered, and likely partially eaten before they were thrown down a shaft that is 49-feet-deep. The analysis is detailed in a study published December 15 in the journal Antiquity and represents the largest-scale example of interpersonal violence from British prehistory.

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While hundreds of human skeletons dating back between 2500 and 1500 BCE in the area, direct evidence of a violent conflict is quite rare to come by. 

“We actually find more evidence for injuries to skeletons dating to the Neolithic period in Britain than the Early Bronze Age, so Charterhouse Warren stands out as something very unusual,” study co-author and University of Oxford archeologist Rick Schulting said in a statement. “It paints a considerably darker picture of the period than many would have expected.”

During the 1970s, the scattered bones of at least 37 individuals were discovered in the 49-feet-deep shaft. The bones belonged to a mixture of men, women, and children, which likely means they were representative of a community.

The skulls have evidence of a violent death from blunt force trauma, unlike the majority of contemporary burials. Researchers from multiple institutions further analyzed the bones to try and learn more about how these people died. They found several cutmarks and fractures that occurred at or near the time of death on the bones. The team believes that this is evidence that they were intentionally butchered and may have been partly consumed. 

To find clues to why people in Early Bronze Age Britain might cannibalize their dead, they looked at the nearby Palaeolithic site of Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge. Evidence uncovered there suggests that cannibalism was likely a funeral rite in the area. However, Charterhouse Warren is a bit different. The evidence of a violent death with no indication of a fight or struggle implies that the victims were caught off guard. The team believes it is likely that they were all massacred and the butchering was done by their enemies. 

[ Related: Bronze Age village was ‘pretty cozy’—until Britain’s Pompeii. ]

Abundant cattle bones have been found mixed in with the human bones suggests that people at Charterhouse Warren probably had enough to eat, so it is unlikely that they were killed strictly for food. 

Instead, cannibalism may have been a way to “other” and dehumanize the deceased. The killers were likening their enemies to animals by eating their flesh and mixing their bones in with animal bones. 

The conflict was likely caused by social factors. Theft or insults may have led to tensions which then escalated out of proportion. Additionally, two of the children had evidence of plague in their teeth. The fear of such a deadly illness may have also exacerbated tensions. Scientists at the The Francis Crick Institute found these signs of plague at Charterhouse Warren in a 2023 study and they were a “completely unexpected” finding, according to Schulting. However, the team still does not know what–if any–impact plague had on this conflict. 

As a whole, the discovery of such violence at Charterhouse Warren shows that in at least this instance, perceived slights and cycles of revenge could result in violent actions. 

“Charterhouse Warren is one of those rare archaeological sites that challenges the way we think about the past,” said Schulting. “It is a stark reminder that people in prehistory could match more recent atrocities and shines a light on a dark side of human behaviour. That it is unlikely to have been a one-off event makes it even more important that its story is told.”

The post Bronze Age butchery and cannibalism unearthed in England appeared first on Popular Science.

A lack of rain and seasonal Santa Ana winds are creating dangerously dry conditions in Southern California, where the Franklin Fire has burned over 4,000 acres just this last week.

In an article for High Country News, Kylie Mohr explains that the combination of dry vegetation and strong winds is fueling stronger wildfires in California and elsewhere. According to climatology professor John Abatzoglou, “We are still waiting for the onset of the wet season in that part of the state, which would meaningfully wet the fuels and put the threat of large fires to bed.”

“The winds will die down and rain will eventually return to Southern California, but this one-two punch of high wind and parched landscapes will recur and intensify in the future. Climate change projections suggest Southern California’s wet season will narrow, and its rainy season arrive later.” A delayed rainy season — a pattern showing up over the last six decades — signals increased risk in years to come. 

• Wildfires
• Climate Change
• Fire
• wildfire risk

Glaciers are magnificent natural structures, dense sheets of ice that can stretch for miles and be a few yards to thousands of feet thick. It’s no wonder many adventurous travelers put hiking one high on their bucket list. But while glaciers may seem like stable, non-threatening slabs of solid terrain perfect for exploration, they can in fact be far from it.

Just head to one of North America’s most popular glaciers–the Athabasca Glacier in Alberta, Canada–and listen for guides to yell at solo wanderers, warning of unseen threats to their safety. That’s because under their feet, there could be a world of hidden hazards, including crevasses and icy rivers, and one wrong step could land explorers in the hospital–or worse. So if you’re headed to hoof it on a glacier, don’t even consider taking a stroll on the surface without hiring a guide if you don’t have extensive training and experience.

While glaciers may seem to be sheets of ice as dense and stable as concrete, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, glaciers are living, breathing things, explains Maria Intxaustegi, a mountaineering guide and member of the expedition team on Lindblad National Geographic Expedition ships, including those that sail to Antarctica where glaciers abound. Meaning they are far from static structures, but are constantly shifting and moving, changing, receding and growing.

“Glacier terrain is a highly dynamic landscape and without proper awareness and methods to route find and mitigate the challenging terrain it is beyond most people’s abilities,” agrees Tim Patterson, a certified guide with the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides (ACMG) and founder of Zuc’min Guiding, which operates in partnership with IceWalks in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada.  

Glaciers are shaped by centuries of snow compacting and turning to ice. Many sprout from one large continental mass called an ice sheet in a veritable river of frozen liquid that flows down valleys, usually between peaks, all the weight of frozen water succumbing to gravity and running downward and out. Those fingers of ice, also called tributaries, eventually terminate, often at a water line or a stretch of ground where the ice simply peters out, though other types of glaciers like cirque and hanging glaciers that exist in natural bowls in the landscape tend not to have a traditional terminus.

And much like a typical river, over even a single year glaciers can change, grow and shrink dramatically. Annual precipitation in the form of snow adds to their size while factors like warming temperatures cause them to melt and shrink. A balance of both keeps them stable. 

Unfortunately, most glaciers around the world are rapidly retreating instead of growing as a result of climate change. But however they’re moving, they slowly creep over rocks, sediment, even water, and change the landscape as they scrape slowly forward or back. But it’s not just the rock beneath that is altered by moving ice; the glacier itself moves, shifts, and opens up. But not just on the surface; beneath is where the real dangers lie.

Possibly the most dangerous feature glaciers possess as a result of their natural movement is crevasses, stress fractures in the ice that crack and open up as a result of shifting ice. As a glacier ebbs and flows, ice sliding on rock causes friction, which can weaken the ice and open gaps in the structure. These can be a few inches deep to a few kilometers deep, Intxaustegi explains. And they can mean injury or death in seconds if you fall into one. The worst part: they can be covered by thin layers of snow or ice, making them invisible from the surface if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

“They hide so well,” Intxaustegi says. Even well-trained individuals can miss them if they’re not careful. What’s worse, a crevasse only needs to be a few feet deep to result in broken bones or other serious injuries, she continues.

That means understanding the science of snow and ice and understanding when it looks solid but is hiding a crevasse. When and how to travel on ice takes lots of education, but also experience, Patterson says.

Not that crevasses are all that lurk beneath the surface.

Water features known as millwells or moulin (also called glacial mills) form where surface water exploits a weakness in the ice and makes a circular, vertical shaft that connects to streams beneath the glacier that eventually flow to the terminus or the end of the ice—known as the toe or leading edge. These under-ice waterways can be as narrow as a few inches in diameter, meaning if you end up in one, it could result in serious injury or death.

What’s more, “Water features like millwells change depending on water flows and sometimes create holes that were not visible only days before,” Patterson states. So even if you’ve been on a guided hike a month or a year before, on the exact same glacier you could still be completely unaware of what worlds exist underneath your feet. 

Patterson recalls a story of a friend and mentor who got a closer look at one than he bargained for. The individual was a park ranger at the time and slipped into a glacial mill on the Saskatchewan Glacier in the 1970s. He then slid down an under-ice waterway for several minutes before–extremely luckily–getting spit out alive at the outflow lake some 220 yards from where he fell in.

In addition to crevasses and millwells, there are plenty of other hazards you may encounter on your way to a glacier. Patterson says rockfalls, flooding, ice falls, and highly technical terrain can all pose extreme risks to explorers who may underestimate the perils of wilderness landscapes.

But all of this doesn’t mean you should avoid glacier-based adventures. On the contrary, in many glacier-rich destinations, guides and guide companies abound. To find a reputable company that knows plenty about how and when to travel on the ice, check for guide’s certifications and experience in glaciated terrain, specifically glacier travel and crevasse rescue training.

These individuals can not only guide you safely over the ice, but take you to places that you wouldn’t have found on your own, educate you about the landscape, and share meaningful histories as you explore. Whatever you do, go with someone who knows. And come back safe and alive.

The post Don’t even think about hiking on a glacier without a guide appeared first on Popular Science.