Keystone Crossroads

It's Friday and we bring you water, transportation, notable city quotes and the impact of the budget impasse on school districts.Read the full story at…

The school year is soon to begin, and districts across the state of Pennsylvania are faced with a troubling proposition: How do you stay afloat when a…

At Keystone Crossroads, we write a lot of practical stories on urban design, policy and politics. But today we're indulging our literary side.We've…

A few years ago, when Philadelphia was on the homestretch of rewriting its zoning code, there was a brief kerfuffle over one of the rules that was under…

For a long time, Philadelphia's Delaware Riverfront was...underwhelming.Each winter, the city operated a harbor-side ice skating rink. There were also…

On a recent weekend stroll at Point State Park, in Pittsburgh, visitors sunned themselves in the grass and along the low walls of the park. The park is a…

Christoph Mertz spends his days looking at cracks in the street.“Once you’re involved in something like this, you see every crack in the road, every…

Pick your favorite issue or cause in Pennsylvania: public education, services for the poor, tax breaks for businesses.Chances are, there's going to be…

The idea of volunteer fire departments originated in Pennsylvania and it's certainly a hallmark of the state: around 90 percent of Pa.'s fire departments…

Homer City Police Chief, Louis Sacco, is one of just three people – two active and one retired – in his pension plan. He drives around the tiny borough,…