Homecoming Week

Jake Blumgart has watched his friends decamp his adopted hometown for places with more opportunities and city services. Will anyone be left to build a better Philly?

Kevin Koczwara didn't necessarily feel ready to commit to homeownership (and a 30-year mortgage) when he was 22. Looking back, he's glad he did.

Even though the house was just across town, a then-15-year-old William Brennan did everything in his power to keep his family from moving to Pheasant Manor. In the end, the decision wasn't his—or anyone else's—to make.

The homecoming queen has become a ubiquitous part of American culture. Crowning queens of otherwise plebeian events, however, goes back to medieval times.

At 18, Molly Osberg thought her communal living situation was a triumph over the grown-up world. By the time she left, she had developed an appreciation for the architecture of society.

Sam Riches went looking for solitude in nature, hoping to find his Jack London moment—but after half a year, he came back with a slightly different conclusion: self-reliance is overrated.

In a culture obsessed with newness, no one wants a "used" home—which makes the Japanese real estate market almost unrecognizable to an American.

What would burglars take if they broke into your home? For Brian Blickenstaff, material losses pale in comparison to the psychological.

Tax-payer-funded stadiums: not so hot right now.

For the past three decades, researchers in New Zealand have undertaken extraordinary—and at times, controversial—efforts to save an 80-million-year-old species from the edge of extinction. Unfortunately for the tuatara, other man-made forces are threatening their survival once more.

The animal science behind your favorite heartwarming YouTube phenomenon.

For Ryan O'Hanlon, there's the Long Island town he remembers growing up in, and then the one the Manhattan newspaper wrote about.

Whether or not you have a home—and how you live your life in relation to it—has enormous economic and psychological implications. Introducing our new special report.