Carey L. Biron

Heat records have repeatedly been toppled in recent weeks, just when farms in some of the hottest parts of United States are at their busiest.

That has Lupe Gonzalo worried.

Across the United States, cities are seeking to tap into billions of dollars in new federal funding and create a "green jobs" industry that backers say holds the promise of creating entirely new local economies. 

The process is bringing together environmental and labour groups - long on opposing sides - and backers say it is now showing dividends that will extend far into the future.

It's a bird...it's a plane...no, it's an air taxi and it's coming in to land soon, prompting cities across the United States to get ready for airborne urban travel. 

Nobody yet knows exactly what an air taxi even is, how it might look or who will get to use it, but cities know it's on the way and want to be ready for takeoff.

What Auden Schendler calls the "Dr. Seuss machine" in his garage not only safeguards his home from the power outages that regularly strike his neighbours in the Colorado mountains, but in his view also helps others in his community and beyond.

"We have mudslides, fires, stores, ice storms, and the power goes down. But not my power," Schendler, 53, told Context.

A push for increased public ownership of electrical utilities and new opportunities for cities, states and nonprofits to get involved is helping propel a U.S. transition to green energy that puts local needs above private profits.

Interest in public power – its generation and distribution – has "exploded" in recent years, said Johanna Bozuwa, executive director with the Climate and Community Project think tank.

Nate Stone is dreading the next few weeks, when the digital inclusion work he has helped spearhead in Denver comes under sudden, serious threat.

Barring a last-minute save, this month a widely heralded federal programme to subsidise internet access for low-income and other households runs out of money – affecting more than 23 million people.

Benefit or blight? This question is increasingly playing on the minds of officials in towns and cities across America as they count the cost of the breakneck expansion of discount stores like Dollar General and Dollar Tree.

In February, Chicago became the largest city yet to seek to limit the retailers, with officials deciding that although the stores fulfil a need for families in areas lacking basic retail services, they were also a cause of economic distress.

Last June, Breanna Sanchez was in trouble: she was behind on the rent, and her landlord in Los Angeles was threatening her family with eviction.

But then she was thrown a lifeline, helped by an invisible algorithm.

Jules Fishelman had ambitious plans to green up his century-old home in Burlington, Vermont, but the cost and logistics felt overwhelming.

"I've had in mind dozens of things I really wanted to do to make it more comfortable, but also to deal with the energy footprint - how much energy it uses," Fishelman said by phone from the converted duplex he has called home since 2001.

Artificial intelligence is about to transform Valerie Ingold's industry - debt collection - and she says it is about time.

"When you started a collections agency, you used to need a phone and a filing cabinet. We've progressed from there, but we're slow adopters," said Ingold, managing director of Commercial Collection Corp. in New York.