Kent Larson from the MIT City Science Center and Jeffrey Schlegelmilch from Columbia’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) showcase innovation partnerships between university and non-academic actors to accelerate climate action. This event invites academics, decision makers, and partners to rethink how research can drive real-world impact. 

Kent Larson will discuss how urban areas are at the center of the global sustainability challenge, accounting for more than 70 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. With national action paralyzed by polarization and political dysfunction, the responsibility for meaningful transformation now falls to mayors and local communities willing to act. The most effective responses will be bottom-up and rooted in the systems that shape urban life. The solutions to a planetary crisis will emerge not from summits and targets, or a technological magic bullet, but from hyper-local action.

For most mayors, reducing emissions is not the top priority - housing affordability, jobs, congestion, and safety are far more pressing. Yet the most durable climate strategies are those that simultaneously deliver social, economic, and environmental gains.

The highest-impact solutions begin with urban form itself. Sprawling, car-dependent development locks in energy waste, high infrastructure costs, and social isolation. Compact, connected neighborhoods, where housing, jobs, learning, health, and the amenities of daily life coexist in proximity, deliver a triple dividend: dramatically lower emissions, economic resilience, and healthier, more equitable lives.

Achieving this requires a new model for local governance that unites policy, design, governance, and technology into a single adaptive system. “Zoning” has become the invisible operating system of cities, determining where people can live and work, how people move, and the emissions they generate.  These frameworks must evolve from rigid, exclusionary rulebooks into dynamic, incentive-driven systems that channel market forces toward shared prosperity and high-performance living – with feedback mechanisms analogous to a natural ecosystem in harmony.

Jeffrey Schlegelmilch will discuss how cities must also become laboratories of adaptation—reimagining infrastructure and governance to withstand rising heat, floods, and disruptions while enhancing resilience, equity, and quality of life.