Using Social Media to Police Restaurants in SF and NYC, Opening up Sidewalks for Gardening in LA, New Rules on Fracking from the White House – Social Impact Across the U.S.

This week in Social Impact Across the U.S.:

• Pew Charitable Trust’s Stateline examines how some cities are using social media to better police restaurants’ health and safety. San Francisco’s health department has logged onto Yelp to list health scores next to customers reviews, and New York City is using a data-mining software to scan Yelp reviews for any mention of keywords that could suggest a restaurant is unhealthy or unsafe, such as “sick” or “food poisoning.”

• The City of Los Angeles is now letting it residents plant gardens on city-owned land, Fast Company reports. The decision came after a high-profile case of a man getting arrested for planting a garden in front of his house on an unused section of the sidewalk without first getting a $400 permit. The incident inspired more locals to plant seeds in city-owned land.

• More cities are becoming LGBTQ friendly, reports CityLab, using data from the Gallup Organization. Geographer Richard Florida, who wrote the piece, pointed out that the divide between cities with the highest percentage of LGBTQ people and those with the lowest has closed significantly. The Washington Post’s Wonkblog looks at the same data to analyze what it means for U.S. cities.

• Last week, the Obama Administration announced new rules for hydraulic fracturing on federal lands, the New York Times reports. The rules are also designed to serve as guidelines for states, which regulate the majority of fracking operations.

What do you think about what’s happening in Social Impact Across the U.S.? How could Philly learn from other cities and states? Please leave a comment to help us bring the national and local conversations together.

Photo via Flickr user David Harris