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...

Amanda Williams shares her lifelong fascination with the complexity of color: from her experiences with race and redlining to her discovery of color theory to her work as a visual artist. Journey with Williams to Chicago's South Side and...

Artist LaToya Ruby Frazier spent five months living in Flint, Michigan, documenting the lives of those affected by the city's water crisis for her photo essay "Flint is Family." As the crisis dragged on, she realized it was going to take...

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...

There are just six weeks left until the celestial odometer that is the Mayan calendar clicks over to the next b'akt'un, but in the meantime, scientists have been trying to solve the mystery behind the collapse of the Mayan civilization....

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.

Clint Smith teaches you about one of the most famous writers, orators, and advocates of the 19th century, Frederick Douglass. Douglass was born in slavery, escaped to the North, and became one of the most influential people of his time....

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...

Our best technology can send men to the Moon and probes to the edge of our solar system, but these distances are vanishingly small compared to the size of the universe. How then can we learn about the galaxies beyond our own? Yuan-Sen...

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...

The traditional approach to work needs a redesign, says economist Juliet Schor. She's leading four-day work week trials in countries like the US and Ireland, and the results so far have been overwhelmingly positive: from increased...

If we can unlock the full potential of our cities, we can minimize the price the planet pays for hosting us in our growing numbers, says Marvin Rees, the Mayor of Bristol, UK, who understands deeply how cities can help (or hurt) the...

Every day, in a city the size of London, 30 million meals are served. But where does all the food come from? Architect Carolyn Steel discusses the daily miracle of feeding a city, and shows how ancient food routes shaped the modern world.

Aristophanes, often referred to as the Father of Comedy, wrote the world's earliest surviving comic dramas. They're stuffed full of parodies, songs, sexual jokes and surreal fantasy -- and they've shaped how comedy's been written and...

It was the dawn of 1863, and London's not-yet-opened subway system - the first of its kind in the world - had the city in an uproar. Most people thought the project, which cost more than 100 million dollars in today's money, would never...

Former Republican member of the u.S. Congress Bob Inglis shares an optimistic message about how conservatives can lead on climate change and other pressing problems -- and how free enterprise (and working together across ideologies) hold...

More than half of the world's population already lives in cities, and another 2.5 billion people are projected to move to urban areas by 2050. The way we build new cities will be at the heart of so much that matters, from climate change...

The man who helped usher in the environmental movement in the 1960s and '70s has been rethinking his positions on cities, nuclear power, genetic modification and geo-engineering. This talk at the US State Department is a foretaste of his...

The 17th Century in Europe was pretty rough in a lot of ways. The Thirty Years War involved a lot of countries, and a lot of battles, and it was terrible for everyone involved, as wars have aa historical tendency to be. At the same time,...

What would it take to reimagine the limits of architecture? Débora Mesa Molina offers some answers in this breathtaking, visual tour of her work, showing how structures can be made with overlooked materials and unconventional methods --...

When TED Fellow Xavier Vilalta was commissioned to create a multistory shopping mall in Addis Ababa, he panicked. Other centers represented everything he hated about contemporary architecture: wasteful, glass towers requiring tons of...

How can cities help save the future? Alex Steffen shows some cool neighborhood-based green projects that expand our access to things we want and need -- while reducing the time we spend in cars.

Visual artist Helen Marriage stages astonishing, large-scale public art events that expand the boundaries of what's possible. In this visual tour of her work, she tells the story of three cities she transformed into playgrounds of the...

There's something amazing growing in the city of Detroit: healthy, accessible, delicious, fresh food. In a spirited talk, fearless farmer Devita Davison explains how features of Detroit's decay actually make it an ideal spot for urban...