Posts tagged with 'systems change'
The low-lying schoolyard of Shuang Wen School (P.S. 184M) in New York City’s Chinatown tells a quiet story of transformation. Once an expanse of asphalt, this schoolyard and the surrounding neighborhood were devastated by flooding when Hurricane Sandy hit in ...
If you are admitted to a New York City public hospital, the in-patient meal menu might surprise you: It’s filled with items like a veggie pad Thai and a Moroccan vegetable tagine. The options look so tempting you probably wouldn’t ...
There’s a growing housing crisis that’s impossible to ignore. Consider the stats: Nearly 3 billion people lack access to housing that is both safe and connected to basic services like energy, water and sanitation. Around 40% of the world’s population lives in ...
Last week, WRI Ross Center co-convened the 23rd edition of Transforming Transportation with our partners at the World Bank. Supported by FIA Foundation, the forum in Washington, DC, brought together more than 5,000 in-person and online participants, reflecting the event’s ...
Now is the time of year when everyone thinks about what they’d like to change about themselves. Despite the museum of abandoned aspirations behind us — the language-learning app that now just judges us in three different languages, the journal ...
Ten years ago, we witnessed something akin to a miracle. Hundreds of leaders came together for the UN’s annual climate summit (COP21) in Paris. There, they forged what many thought impossible: a global agreement to curb climate change — one where virtually ...
Water is a lifeline for cities. Yet, in Addis Ababa, that lifeline is growing tenuous. Over the past decade, the city’s water supply has dwindled dramatically due to intense urbanization, lagging infrastructure and non-revenue losses, landscape degradation and the growing ...
It may seem like political divides around climate change are only deepening. Yet the world’s largest climate survey reveals a striking consensus: Eighty percent of people globally want their countries to take stronger climate action, and over half think about climate change ...
Resilience in cities is often framed around large-scale infrastructure projects and sweeping policy shifts. We see headlines about billion-dollar climate adaptation plans, smart cities leveraging AI for disaster response and ambitious net-zero pledges. But some of the most impactful solutions ...
At a moment when all countries need to raise their ambition on climate action, the opposite seems to be happening. Headline after headline show lackluster progress and rolled-back commitments. For one, climate change was a low priority for voters in ...
What does it take for cities to create a true systems change that creates a holistic, positive shift of the entire urban system? Finding and celebrating examples of this feat is at the heart of the WRI Ross Center Prize for Cities. Since ...
The message is everywhere: You (alone) can save the planet. Choose a veggie burger instead of beef. Book this flight, not that one. Buy thrift over fast fashion. Shrink your “carbon footprint.” But here’s what most people don’t know: The ...
In a time of polycrises – from economic and political instability to health and environmental emergencies – water is a resource that cannot be relegated to the background. Especially in urban environments, water demand is ever-increasing and in too many ...
Cities are not just places where people live—they are interconnected networks of people, services and economic activity. A city is a system of systems, bringing together transportation, energy, buildings, water, waste management and more. Transforming these interconnected systems is vital ...
If a picture can tell a whole story, then the image below of an intersection in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, shows the past, present and future of global transformation in the transport sector. During Transforming Transportation 2024, which focused on ...
