"PARIS — The hammer blow dealt to New York by superstorm Sandy should raise the alarm for coastal mega-cities in Asia which are more exposed but less equipped to deal with such threats, experts said on Tuesday."

"More than 20,000 high-temperature records have been broken so far this year in the United States. And the heat is especially bad in cities, which are heating up about twice as fast as the rest of the planet."

"NEW YORK -- Two years before Hurricane Irene created the prospect of a flooding nightmare in New York City, 100 scientists and engineers met to sketch out a bold defense: massive, moveable barriers to shield the city from a storm-stirred sea."

"While many cities around the country grapple with drought and excessive heat this year, city planners in Boston have something else on their minds: the prospect of rising water."

"The Arizona city already logs more days over 100 degrees than any U.S. city, and climate researchers predict Phoenix will grow hotter still in the coming decades. Planners are taking the projections seriously, and are looking for ways to adapt the city and its residents to a hotter, drier reality."

"Work was scarce for architect David Mullican and many Galveston Island builders after hurricane Ike. As damages were assessed, insurance claims disputed and homes were repaired piecemeal, Mullican was out of work for more than a year."

"NEW YORK CITY -- Mayor Michael Bloomberg has given his city one of the most detailed and highly publicized plans to reduce carbon emissions and to adapt to rising sea levels and other risks posed by climate change."

"The mega-cities of Asia will be the toughest test for climate-change policy as a rising middle class begins to consume goods at rates only previously seen in the west."

"Tia Jackson’s family has lived on the same block of Halsey Street in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood for five generations. Kristen Rapp is a newcomer. Jackson is black. Rapp is white. In a part of town where the gentrification process has been grinding along painfully for years, the two might never have met if not for a sign on a fence on a vacant lot, left there by the members of a group called 596 Acres."

"Intense rainfalls are getting bigger and more frequent, causing local governments, engineers and landowners to rethink whether sewer systems and other drainage features are up to their tasks."

"New Orleans, Houston and Albuquerque are losing trees faster than any other U.S. cities, and across the country tree cover is declining at a rate of about four million trees per year, finds new U.S. Forest Service research published in the journal 'Urban Forestry & Urban Greening.'"

"The rapid increase in the number of cities home to more than 10 million people will bring huge challenges … and opportunities."

Detroit, one of the birthplaces of American industrial capitalism, has also been in many ways one of its earlier deathplaces -- an urban landscape where many houses and lots are abandoned. A conversation with civil rights legend Grace Lee Boggs and people she inspires offers a key example of how the urban agriculture movement is reclaiming post-industrial America both physically and spiritually.

Christa Tippett hosts this episode of American Public Media's On Being January 19, 2012.

Changes in federal flood insurance policy, along with increased flood risks from global warming, may encourage development in the wrong places.

"A review suggests that the Amazon rainforest may be changing, courtesy of human impacts on the region's weather."