According to the United Nations, the cities of 2050 will house five and a half billion people, two and a half billion more people than they do now, and 66% of the projected world population of nine billion. Many of those densely populated cities will be next to oceans that are one to two feet higher than they are now, where so-called 100-year floods and 100-year droughts will recur every three years.
Given all these population pressures and potentially disastrous climactic events, does it even make sense to try to make our cities “sustainable?” Steve Cohen, Executive Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, thinks so. His new book, “The Sustainable City,” out now from Columbia University Press, outlines the steps needed to keep our cities vibrant and relevant in the future.
Steve Cohen joins Eight O’Clock Buzz host Brian Standing by phone.
