The Earth Institute hosted a panel focused on how New York City, and other cities like it, can take steps to become stronger and more resilient in the face of climate change.

Nilda Mesa joins the Earth Institute to launch a new program in urban sustainability and equity planning at the Urban Design Lab.

The human footprint continues to expand, with three quarters of earth’s land surface now experiencing measurable pressures from buildings, roads, crops, pastures and other human structures and activities, according to a new report. But the report also finds an encouraging trend: In recent years, growth in the footprint has lagged far behind population and economic growth.

As important as global economic and cultural forces may be, I see the push for distinctive identity and a sense of place ensuring that communities and nation states will maintain their power in a more globally interconnected world. Part of it is expressed in Not in My Back Yard (NIMBY) local politics that resists development by local or global forces. This desire for community control of local land uses is powerful and growing.

While I remain convinced that humans require live interaction and in person contact to be effective, a high proportion of communication is electronic and require few incremental resources to be undertaken. I am quite certain that we spend more time than ever communicating professionally and personally.

Students in the Master of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy (MPA-ESP) program worked this past semester to analyze city-level strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Buildings account for almost a third of global greenhouse gas emissions and the U.N. Environment Programme projects that if we continue with business as usual in the building sector, these emissions will double by 2030. Fortunately, green building is on the rise around the world.

This Earth Day, April 22, 2016, New York City residents and commuters are encouraged to leave their car at home and use another means of travel as part of the city’s first year of Car-Free Day. Find out what Columbia University is doing in support of #CarFreeNYC.

Knowing how settlements are distributed across the landscape—e.g., in clusters, along roads or waterways, or scattered widely—has important implications for designing infrastructure, improving access, and promoting sustainability.