Climate and the City

Climate and the City is a multi-week series of TED-style conversations focusing on how Chicago is responding locally to the global climate crisis, despite relentless climate anxiety and despair. We look forward to introducing you to local thinkers, activists, and policy-makers who go beyond offering grim forecasts and can help point us towards ideas that have the potential to make a difference, in Chicago and beyond. 

Climate and the City is a collaboration between Chicago Studies and the Program on the Global Environment.

Distinguished Speakers

Winter Quarter 2022 Weeks 4-8

Communicating Inclusive Solutions (2/3)

In Communicating Inclusive Solutions, Leslé Honoré will discuss how the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a climate and sustainability research center, has learned to use inclusive communication as a key tool in building practical solutions to make Chicago neighborhoods more climate resilient.

Transit-Oriented Development (2/9)

In this session Robert Schultz of Active Transportation Alliance will discuss how Chicago's transit policy can be reimagined to contribute to our climate readiness, instead of compounding the errors of the past. Active Transportation Alliance advocates for walking, bicycling, and public transit to create healthy, sustainable, and equitable communities.

Restorative Justice and Indigenous Urban Environmental Restoration (2/16)

This session will be hosted by Xavier Colon and Samantha Arechiga, activists and organizers with North Lawndale's Indigenous cultural center and garden Semillas y Raices. Their presentation will explore their holistic approach to communal resilience.

Postponed: Resilience for All Species

In Resilience for All Species, Abigail Derby Lewis of the Field Museum will take the broadest possible perspective on who “counts” as a Chicagoan and consider the non-human residents of our region, many of whom boast much longer histories in this area than we do.

Visualizing Environmental Change (3/2)

In this session we will explore the ways that shifting our scales of reference can open us to new responses to this planetary crisis, presented by Alexander Arroyo and Grga Basic, both members of the Urban Theory Lab.

Bike Lane Uprising (2/1)

Join for a Data in Dialogue Session with Bike Lane Uprising, a cyclist-led civic tech platform focused on making cycling safer by making it easy to report bike lane obstructions, and finding trends in the data to hold violators accountable and prevent future obstructions with founder Christina Whitehouse.