Blog Posts: cities

The COVID-19 pandemic lays bare two facets of our new reality: we are more interconnected than ever, and cities are at the front lines of this crisis and will be at the front lines of any similarly globalized crisis in the future. Cities are already in adaptation mode.

International consensus on cross-border environmental issues has been hard to come by, but a 40-year-old air pollution treaty has enjoyed great if largely unsung success, leading to cleaner air, healthier forests and the prevention of hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.

For cities, adapting to climate change doesn't just mean building more things. Good climate adaptation means including and engaging poor and marginalized communities.

Future cities will need a near-zero-carbon footprint, an end to dependence on fossil fuels and an ability to manage weather extremes while finding ways to lift up already vulnerable and marginalized groups. To envision these cities of the future, we have to demand more of our collective imagination.

Zoleka Mandela draws on her grandfather's legacy in speaking out against the injustice of the hidden epidemic that threatens children, especially in the developing world. In this podcast, she is joined by Claudia Adriazola-Steil, director for health & road safety at the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, as they discuss the unimaginable toll—emotional and economic—taken by road deaths, and what we can do to turn this loss into action.

On average, almost two-thirds of urban residents across 15 cities in the global South lack access to safely managed sanitation, with access lowest in cities of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Urban climate action is good for the planet. How do you make it good for people, too?

Historically, cities have upgraded poor neighborhoods by razing and reconstructing them, often displacing residents. But to actually improve affordable housing and give residents access to services and opportunities, cities need a different approach.

Los Angeles Air Force Base, the first federal facility with a plug-in electric fleet of vehicles on the ground, has gone a step further. Now these EVs are the first in California to provide vehicle-to-grid services, with batteries that can send energy back to the grid, enabling cleaner, more efficient, more reliable power.

When Cape Town and Chennai nearly ran out of water, these two cities managed to avert Day Zero, while revealing broad social inequity in both places. World Cities Day is a good moment to consider the lessons to be learned about equitable responses to water crises.