Design gives form to the future, says architect Bjarke Ingels. In this worldwide tour of his team's projects, journey to a waste-to-energy power plant (that doubles as an alpine ski slope) and the LEGO Home of the Brick in Denmark -- and...

Wouldn't it be nice if our transportation was as sleek as in The Jetsons or Futurama? Flying cars are cool, but what about a giant network of human-sized tubes that run through buildings and across entire cities? Well guess what? The...

Every 12 years, a megacity springs up in India for the Kumbh Mela religious festival -- what's built in ten weeks is completely disassembled in one. What can we learn from this fully functioning, temporary settlement? In a visionary...

We all share one planet -- we breathe the same air, drink the same water and depend on the same oceans, forests and biodiversity. economist Naoko Ishii is on a mission to protect these shared resources, known as the global commons, that...

I want you to reimagine how life is organized on earth, says global strategist Parag Khanna. As our expanding cities grow ever more connected through transportation, energy and communications networks, we evolve from geography to what he...

Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities -- that wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects of a city can be deduced from a single number: the city's population. In...

Our descendants own the future, but the decisions and actions we make now will tremendously impact generations to come, says philosopher Roman Krznaric. From a global campaign to grant legal personhood to nature to a groundbreaking...

Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran outlines the fascinating functions of mirror neurons. Only recently discovered, these neurons allow us to learn complex social behaviors, some of which formed the foundations of human civilization as...

J.D. Vance grew up in a small, poor city in the Rust Belt of southern Ohio, where he had a front-row seat to many of the social ills plaguing America: a heroin epidemic, failing schools, families torn apart by divorce and sometimes...

Cities designed like families can last for generations. Skeptical? Look to master architect Liu Thai Ker, who transformed Singapore into a modern marvel with his unique approach to sustainable urban design. Liu shares creative wisdom and...

From helping build smart cities to supporting the sustainable energy sector, the possibilities of big data are endless. But many companies are still wary of sharing data that could expose them to risk and diminish their competitive...

Creative, sustainable solutions find their home in the thousands of informal neighborhoods across the world. Urban planner Jota Samper believes these often overlooked settlements (also known as slums) should be regarded as hubs of...

Cities are becoming increasingly privatized: commercial real estate dominates the streets, carving up open space that once belonged to the public and selling it as a commodity to the highest bidder. Architect Elizabeth Diller explores...

From London to Tokyo, climate change is causing cities to sink -- and our modern concrete infrastructure is making us even more vulnerable to severe flooding, says landscape architect and TED Fellow Kotchakorn Voraakhom. But what if we...

Scientists predict climate change will displace more than 180 million people by 2100 -- a crisis of "climate migration" the world isn't ready for, says disaster recovery lawyer and Louisiana native Colette Pichon Battle. In this...

In January 1953, a tidal surge shook the North Sea. The titanic waves flooded the Dutch coastline, killing almost 2,000 people. 54 years later, a similar storm threatened the region. But this time, they were ready. This was thanks to a...

Eduardo Paes is the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, a sprawling, complicated, beautiful city of 6.5 million. He shares four big ideas about leading Rio -- and all cities -- into the future, including bold (and do-able) infrastructure upgrades...

* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. Theaster Gates, a potter by training and a social activist by calling, wanted to do something about the sorry state...

Venice is sinking. To save it, Rachel Armstrong says we need to outgrow architecture made of inert materials and, well, make architecture that grows itself. She proposes a not-quite-alive material that does its own repairs and sequesters...

The climate crisis is too vast and complicated to solve with a silver bullet, says author David Wallace-Wells. What we need is a shift in how we live. Follow along as he lays out some of the dramatic actions we could take to build a...

When humans build a city, most species in the area tend to disappear. But there are some, called synurbic species, that are living their best lives in our concrete jungles.

Don't believe predictions that say the future is trending towards city living. urbanization is actually reaching the end of its cycle, says logistics expert Julio Gil, and soon more people will be choosing to live (and work) in the...

The pandemic spurred an unprecedented reclamation of urban space, ushering in a seemingly bygone era of pedestrian pastimes, as cars were sidelined in favor of citizens. Highlighting examples from across the United States, environmental...

Sometimes, small things make a huge impact. After studying how bees in urban environments can survive by navigating small land patches, ecologist Amanda Schochet was inspired to build MICRO, a network of portable science museums the size...