Energy efficient homes mean less air pollution. But are they affordable?

While some parts of the United States struggle with drought, others are faced with more water than they know what to do with. Minnesota reconstructs roads and drainage systems in order to be more prepared for the large amounts of rain fall they have received, largely due to climate change.

Geography and climate change challenge the viability of sea-level cities in Vietnam, but architects, researchers, and urban planners work together to find creative solutions. One architect in Ho Chi Minh City designed green roofs to absorb the rainwater that causes floods.

Ithaca works on a three-pronged approach to conquer homelessness, and to make housing more affordable in general.

A growing number of people in the famously crowded Tokyo metropolis are becoming ‘city farmers’, planting crops atop tall buildings or deep underground. In an age of detrimental climate change, urban cultivation and green roof agriculture will soon be necessary as food, water and energy resources become scarcer.

New Orleans implemented an extraordinary 10-year plan that engaged unprecedented cross-sector collaboration between government, non-profit, and private entities to provide housing and housing services to the city's homeless veterans. The city's success in providing homes for every single veteran formerly on their streets motivated cities across the nation to tackle the crises using similar means, leading to a 1/3 decline veteran homelessness since 2010.

By the 1980s, Roxbury and north Dorchester had been devastated by the disinvestment and white flight of the 1960s and 1970s. Racist banking and housing policies (“redlining”) had segregated people of color from opportunity, barring them from getting home loans except in certain neighborhoods. So the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) brought together residents to develop their own comprehensive plan to revitalize their community, building a community food system along the way.

Too much solar and wind power in Germany is overloading their grid. A firm developed a new technology that uses super-fast batteries and software to hold intermittent wind and solar power when more than needed is generated.

While billions of taxpayer dollars are allocated each year to support shelters and social service initiatives, homelessness remains a persistent problem in the U.S. - in 2013, an estimated 610,000 people slept without shelter every night. All over the country, people are building "tiny homes" to give to the homeless, providing them with shelter, a bathroom, and a kitchen for less then the cost of a shelter.

People need a place to sleep and eat, they need privacy, but they also need community. Seattle had a recent boom in micro-housing which offers a community living model where individuals have a personal tiny room and bathroom but share a kitchen.

Civic leaders in the U.S. struggle to effectively help their distressed neighborhoods. East Lake, Atlanta, created a replicable model that mixes residents of differing socio-economic status, and focuses on education and health in the area.