We have spent the last several weeks looking at some of the benefits of public transportation, according to its advocates. This week we shift gears and look at some of the challenges that public transportation faces when the topic is raised. 

We look at the challenges around substantial initial costs, long construction times, and the risk of low utilization once it is built. 

We have looked at most of the well-recognized modes of public transportation, but what about some of the lesser utilized ones? This week we spend some time looking at lesser known modes of public transportation, and we look at how they are utilized around the world by different cities and communities. 

We look at monorails, and their ability to offer a medium-level rail option without the footprint of laying tracks on the ground. We look at aerial gondolas and how they are able to connect neighborhoods in areas with difficult topography, and we look at maglev trains, and how they can offer high speed rail using newer technology. 

We continue our conversation around public transportation, this week focusing on heavy rail. Heavy rail is different from light rail mainly in scale and capacity. Heavy rail cars are larger, and heavy rail trains often include more cars than light rail, meaning they can carry many more passengers at a time. 

Proponents of heavy rail often see it as a foundation of a larger public transit system, carrying millions of passengers every day between major hubs, with lighter public transit lines, like buses and trolleys, carrying passengers the last mile or two to their final destination. 

We continue our conversation around public transit, this week focusing on light rail. Light rail often comes in the form of trolleys, tram cars, and street cars, and are generally defined as small, 2-3 car trains on tracks that use electricity for power. 

We look at some of the benefits that advocates of light rail raise when discussing public transit. They argue that light rail can be more efficient, both in costs and in greenhouse gas emissions, than may other forms of transit. They also argue that rail can help trigger revitalization in communities and can encourage investment in areas where light rail is built. 

This week we are starting a conversation around transportation. We begin by looking at buses and discussing some of the arguments that proponents of buses raise when discussing their benefits. 

We look at how buses offer flexibility in public transit at a fraction of the cost of building out a rail system. We also take a brief look at Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems and how they can mimic light rail without the cost of laying track. 

This week we look at some of the arguments of supporters of alternative methods of landscaping, particularly xeriscaping. Xeriscaping was coined as a term in 1981 by combining "xero" (meaning "dry") with "Landscaping", and aims to create a lush welcoming yard with minimal use of irrigation. 

We look at some examples of how xeriscaping can reduce water usage, and look at some of the creative ways that designers use xeriscaping methods to enrich their property while also enriching their local environments. 

We take a look at lawns. In the past several years a debate around lawns and their importance, as well as their environmental impact, has increased in the US. Today we take a look at the argument in favor of lawns and look at some of the reasons why they hold such an important space in our culture. 

We look at the history of lawns, and how they relate to the American Dream. We also look at some scientific studies that investigate how lawns and heavily vegetated areas can cool an environment and can impact the livability of a neighborhood.

We continue our conversation around the War on Drugs and its relationship with the United States' increase in its prison population through the last quarter of the 20th century.  This week we look at the argument that the it was policy decisions that drove the US to increase its number of inmates, rather than it being a direct result of more crime.

We look at the correlation between arrest rates and policy changes as well as incarceration rates to similar countries to the US as we explore this point of view. 

We take a deeper look at the US prison population and its dramatic increase during the last quarter of the 20th century, and we ask the question "How did this happen?" Many experts argue that the rise in US incarceration rates is closely correlated with the War on Drugs. 

We take a brief look at the War on Drugs, and what led to it, as well as some data and statistics around drug use and crime rates during the 1970s and 80s. 

We continue our conversation around the privatization of prisons. This week we take a look at the argument in favor of privatized prisons. The first modern private prisons emerged in the US in the 1980s, and the industry has grown rapidly since then. 

Supporters of privatized prisons argue that they offer the opportunity for better innovation and flexibility than government facilities. We look at some examples of this, such as tablets and online education and training opportunities for inmates, as well as GEO Group's Continuum of Care program, which aims at assisting and aiding inmates with training, education, therapy, both while they serve their sentence and after.