COVID’s Impact and the Future of Cities

An urban and land change scientist, Karen Seto is one of the world’s leading experts on contemporary urbanization and global change. She uses satellite remote sensing, field interviews, and modeling methods to understand how urbanization will affect the planet, including land change, food systems, biodiversity, and climate change. She has pioneered methods to reconstruct urban land use with satellite imagery and has developed novel methods to forecast urban expansion. She has conducted urbanization research in China for twenty years and in India for more than ten. Dr. Seto has served on numerous national and international scientific bodies. She was a coordinating lead author for the 2022 IPCC 6th Assessment Report and the 2014 IPCC 5th Assessment Report. For both reports she co-led the chapter on urban mitigation of climate change. She currently co-chairs the U.S. National Academies Climate Security Roundtable, established by the direction of Congress to help better understand and anticipate the ways climate change affects U.S. national security interests. She also co-chairs the U.S. National Academies Subcommittee on U.S.- China Scientific Engagement. From 2000 to 2008, she was faculty at Stanford, where she held joint appointments in the Woods Institute for the Environment and the School of Earth Sciences. She has received many awards for her scientific contributions, including the Outstanding Contributions to Remote Sensing Research Award from the American Association of Geographers.

Dr. Seto is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, and a Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She received a PhD in Geography from Boston University.

Professor Snowden received his Ph.D. from Oxford University in 1975. His books include Violence and Great Estates in the South of Italy: Apulia, 1900-1922 (1984); The Fascist Revolution in Tuscany, 1919-1922 (1989); Naples in the Times of Cholera (1995) and The Conquest of Malaria: Italy, 1900-1962 (2006).  Conquest was awarded the Gustav Ranis Prize from the MacMillan Center at Yale in 2007 as “the best book on an international topic by a member of the Yale Faculty,” the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize by the American Historical Association as the best work on Italy in any period, and the 2008 Welch Medal from the American Association for the History of Medicine.

He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Italian history, European social and political history, and the history of medicine.

Ana V. Diez Roux, MD, PHD, MPH, is the Dana and David Dornsife Dean and Distinguished University Professor of Epidemiology at the Dornsife School of Public Health and Director of the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative. Originally trained as a pediatrician in her native Buenos Aires, she completed public health training at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. Before joining Drexel University, she served on the faculties of Columbia University and the University of Michigan, where she was Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Director of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health.

Dr. Diez Roux is internationally known for her research on the social determinants of population health and the study of how neighborhoods affect health. Her work on neighborhood health effects has been highly influential in the policy debate on population health and its determinants. Her research areas include social epidemiology and health disparities, environmental health effects, urban health, psychosocial factors, cardiovascular disease epidemiology, social environment-gene interactions, and the use of multilevel methods and complex systems approaches in population health. She has led large NIH and foundation funded research and training programs in the United States and in collaboration with various institutions in Latin America and is currently Principal Investigator of the Wellcome Trust funded SALURBAL (Salud Urbana en América Latina) study.

Dr. Diez Roux has served on numerous editorial boards, review panels and advisory committees including most recently the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) of the Environmental Protection Agency (as Chair), the Board of Scientific Counselors (BSC) of the National Center for Health Statistics, the Committee on Health and Wellbeing in the Changing Urban Environment of the International Council for Science (ISCUS), and CDCs Community Preventive Services Taskforce.

She has received the Wade Hampton Frost Award for her contributions to public health from the American Public Health Association and the Award for Outstanding Contributions to Epidemiology from the American College of Epidemiology. She is an elected member of the American Epidemiological Society and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2009. Dr. Diez Roux has been an active mentor of doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty from diverse backgrounds.

Blessing is a Senior Research Scientist and Head of Urbanization and Wellbeing. Blessing works on migration, urbanization, adolescent reproductive behavior and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa under the Urbanization and Wellbeing research program. He holds a PhD in Sociology, Master of Arts degree in Sociology from Brown University (USA) and an MSc from the University of Ibadan (Nigeria).

Blessing joined APHRC in 2008 as a Post-Doctoral Fellow from Brown University (USA). He previously worked at APHRC as a Research Intern and Travel Scholar between August 2004 and June 2005. Prior to joining APHRC, Blessing worked at Abia State University, Nigeria since August 1988 as a Graduate Assistant in the Department of Sociology and promoted to a Senior Lecturer between 1999 and 2002.

Jason Corburn is a Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and School of Public Health. He directs the Institute of Urban and Regional Development and the Center for Global Healthy Cities at UC Berkeley. He also co-directs the joint Master of City Planning (MCP) and Master of Public Health (MPH) degree program at UC Berkeley. His research, practice, and teaching focus on urban health in the US and globally. He leads action-research projects that explore the links between environmental health and social justice in cities, notions of expertise in science-based policy-making, and the role of local knowledge in promoting greater urban health equity. Professor Corburn’s research and practice addresses racial/ethnic disparities in health, citizen-science, community health & healing, urban gun violence, climate justice, health-in-all policies, and informal settlements and health equity.

Albert Ko, MD, is a Department Chair and Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases) and of Medicine (Infectious Diseases); Department Chair, Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. Dr. Ko’s research centers on the health problems that have emerged as a consequence of rapid urbanization and social inequity. He coordinates a research and training program on urban slum health in Brazil and is conducting prospective community-based studies on rat-borne leptospirosis, dengue, meningitis and respiratory infections. His research particularly focuses on understanding the transmission dynamics and natural history of leptospirosis, which is as a model for an infectious disease that has emerged in slum environments due to the interaction of climate, urban ecology and social marginalization. Current research combines multidisciplinary epidemiology, ecology and translational research-based approaches to identify prevention and control strategies that can be implemented in slum communities. More recently, Dr. Ko and his team has mobilized the public health research capacity at their site in the city of Salvador, Brazil to investigate the on-going outbreak of Zika virus infection and microcephaly. Dr. Ko is also Program Director at Yale for the Fogarty Global Health Equity Scholars Program which provides research training opportunities for US and LMIC post and pre-doctoral fellows at collaborating international sites.

Dr. Vlahov is a Professor at the Yale School of Nursing with a joint appointment in Epidemiology and Public Health. He is also the Co-Director of the National Program Office for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health: Evidence for Action Program. 

Dr. Vlahov’s research and practice have been focused on advancing health in urban settings which has been funded by NIDA, NIMHD, CDC, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Gates Foundation. He was the founding President of the International Society for Urban Health. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Medical School in Belo Horizonte, Brazil to develop their programs in urban health, and served as expert consultant to the WHO’s Urban Health Center in Kobe, Japan; the Istituto Superiore d’ Sanita in Rome and the Municipal Health Service in Amsterdam. Dr. Vlahov is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Urban Health, has edited four books on urban health and published over 680 scholarly papers.

He served on the New York City Board of Health, the NIH National Advisory Board on Drug Abuse, the NIH Advisory Board for the Office of AIDS Research, the Board of Directors for the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, and HRSA’s National Advisory Board on Nursing Education and Practice.

In 2011, Dr. Vlahov was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and served on the Institute’s Board of Global Health. In 2015, he was inducted into the Johns Hopkins University Society of Scholars. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the New York Academy of Medicine and serves as a member, Board of Visitors, University of Maryland School of Nursing. 

Jodie W. McLean is Chief Executive Officer of EDENS, one of the nation’s leading private owners, operators and developers of retail real estate. With a tenure of more than 25 years, she has established herself as a key player in EDENS’ growth and expansion to its current marketplace leadership, capitalized by blue chip investors and assets valued at $6.5 billion.

McLean is responsible for EDENS’ strategy to move the portfolio to major urban centers, creating a portfolio of assets that are the center of community life. She was named Chief Investment Officer in 1997, President in 2002 and CEO in 2015. Overall, she has been responsible for the development, redevelopment, acquisition and disposition of more than $15 billion in retail assets.

McLean passionately believes that retail should evolve beyond a shopping experience, and advocates for connectivity to the communities surrounding the company’s retail centers. To ensure this, each EDENS development is crafted to serve as an authentic gathering place, including a unique merchandising mix and welcoming design elements, fostering a sense of engagement with its neighbors.

McLean serves on several boards including Cushman & Wakefield (NYSE: CWK), the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and Milhaus. She is also a Trustee of Innovating Commerce Serving Communities (ICSC), the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and The Real Estate Round Table. McLean is a member of the Liberty Fellowship (Aspen Institute), Class of 2009.

A native of Chicago, IL, Jodie McLean holds a B.S. in Finance and Management from the Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, and a degree from South Carolina Honors College.

Christina Gaw works closely with limited partners relating to capital raising and new product developments. Gaw Capital is a real estate private equity firm and has raised six commingled funds targeting the Greater China and APAC since 2005. The firm also manages value-add/opportunistic funds in Vietnam and the US, a Pan-Asia hospitality fund, a European hospitality fund, a growth equity fund and provides services for separate account direct investments globally. The firm has over USD$ 32.5 billion in AUM as of Q2 2021. She also serves as Executive Director of Pioneer Global Group (0224.HK) and Independent Non-Executive Director and Member of the Finance and General Committee and the Sustainability Committee of CLP Holdings Limited (0002.HK).

Ms. Gaw was named Global PERE’s Rainmaker 30 and one of the Top 10 PERE’s Women of Influence in 2021.

Prior to joining Gaw Capital, Christina had an investment banking career with Goldman Sachs and UBS as Managing Director for over 15 years, with responsibilities as Head of Asia Equities Distribution and as Head of APAC Capital Introduction team within Prime Brokerage. She has deep experience in covering some of the largest institutional investors globally.

Christina is also active in community and educational sector capacity work in Hong Kong. She is currently an honorary advisor of Hong Kong PropTech Association, a board member of InspiringHK Sports Foundation and an advisor of Teach for Hong Kong, Time Auction, finance committee member and board member of Hong Kong International School, board member of Stellart International School of Arts, executive committee vice chairwoman of St. Paul’s Co-educational College Alumni Association, corporate member of the Cheltenham Ladies College UK, school supervisor for TWGHs S. C. Gaw Memorial College and the council member of Lingnan University, Hong Kong. She has also served as the board member of The Women’s Foundation for over 10 years from 2009 to 2019 and the board treasurer of The Hong Kong Ballet Group from 2010 to 2017.

Christina received her B.S in Business Administration from the University of San Francisco, California.

Clint previously was a Senior Managing Director and the Chief Strategy Officer for Hines where he served as a member of the firm’s internal proprietary research group and oversaw a variety of firm-wide strategic initiatives. Prior to joining Hines, he was in charge of Americas Research and Strategy at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. He received his M.S. in Finance from Boston College and his B.A. in Economics from the University of North Carolina.

Robert M. White, Jr. founded Real Capital Analytics Inc. in 2000 to bring greater transparency to the investment markets by providing real-time data of capital flows and prices of commercial properties. He is a noted authority on the real estate capital markets who is frequently cited in the press and has authored numerous articles for industry publications and the firm’s own Capital Trends publications.

Mr. White is a Counselor of Real Estate, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and a Fellow of the Homer Hoyt Institute. He serves on the board of directors for the Pension Real Estate Association and the advisory board for the Real Estate Research Institution. Before founding RCA, Mr. White spent 14 years in the real estate investment banking and brokerage industry. He is a graduate of the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia.

Kevin D. Gray, FRICS, received his MArch from the University of Pennsylvania and his MBA from the Yale School of Management. Mr. Gray is a former managing director of real estate investment banking for PricewaterhouseCoopers Securities, and the editor, with John R. White, of Shopping Centers and Other Retail Properties as well as a licensed real estate appraiser and broker, and a registered architect. Mr. Gray is a Fellow of the Royal College of Chartered Surveyors, and a member of the International Council of Shopping Centers. Mr. Gray is lecturer in real estate at the Yale School of Management and the Yale School of Architecture.

City Parks Alliance (CPA) is the only independent, nationwide membership organization solely dedicated to urban parks, and is based in Washington, D.C. Since joining CPA in 2004, Catherine has created a national advocacy campaign to increase federal funding for urban parks; developed a suite of community capacity building programs to strengthen local park stewardship; designed a training program on public private partnerships; and established the bi-ennial Greater & Greener international urban parks conference as the premier event for park leaders. CPA also facilitated the Red Fields to Green Fields project, a national research effort with Georgia Tech to convert distressed commercial real estate into productive urban green space. In December 2013 CPA launched a bi-partisan Mayors for Parks coalition to support reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Catherine currently is co-investigator of The National Study of Neighborhood Parks, funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is being conducted by the RAND Corporation and City Parks Alliance with assistance from the Trust for Public Land. The four-year study will observe 170 randomly selected parks in 25 representative American cities in order to understand how local neighborhood parks contribute to physical activity as well as assess park management practices and programming. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree, Bucknell University; a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture, University of Pennsylvania School of Design; and completed the Executive Program for Non-Profit Leaders, Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Dr. Gregory Bratman is Assistant Professor of Nature, Health, and Recreation, and the director of the Environment and Well-Being Lab in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington. His work takes place at the nexus of psychology, public health and ecology, and is focused on investigating the ways in which the environment is associated with human well-being. He takes both empirical and theoretical approaches to understand how nature experience impacts cognitive function, mood, and emotion regulation, with an emphasis on people living in urban environments. He has also published reviews about the impacts of the environment on mental health, informed methods for integrating these effects into ecosystem service studies, and proposed ways in which this science can be put into practice to address health inequities that are disproportionately experienced by underserved and socially disadvantaged communities. Dr. Bratman is the Doug Walker Endowed Professor at The University of Washington and a JPB Environmental Health Fellow through the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Sarah Charlop-Powers is the co-founder and executive director of the Natural Areas Conservancy (NAC). The NAC is a pioneer in the field of urban conservation, using data and science to develop innovative new ways to manage urban natural areas so that they provide recreation opportunities for diverse users, protect local biodiversity, and provide environmental benefits. 

She led the development of a 25 year Forest Management Framework for New York City, a data-driven plan to restore and create public access in 7,000 acres of forested parkland. In 2018, she initiated a new national network with collaborators from 12 cities to advance the field of urban forest management. Sarah has a BA in Economics from Binghamton University and an MEM from the Yale School of the Environment.

Morgan Grove is a social scientist and Team Leader for the USDA Forest Service’s Baltimore Urban Field Station and is a lecturer at Yale University. He joined the USDA Forest Service in 1996 and has been a Co-Principal Investigator in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) since its beginning in 1997. Morgan has a B.A. from Yale College with a dual degree in Architecture and Environmental Studies, a M.F.S. in Community Forestry from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Social Ecology from Yale University.

LaDeau is a disease ecologist and senior scientist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY. Her research integrates empirical and statistical work to develop frameworks for understanding and forecasting how changing climate and urbanization influence invertebrate disease vectors and associated human risk. LaDeau is especially interested in the social and health consequences of feedbacks between socio-economics and ecological habitat condition in urban ecosystems.  LaDeau received her PhD at Duke University and completed a NSF Bioinformatics Postdoctoral Fellowship with Smithsonian Institution and the Ohio State University.