
- Ecology for cities
- Urban resilience
- Ecosystem services
- Urban futures
- Nature-based solutions
- Sustainability
- Justice
Timon McPhearson is Professor of Urban Ecology, Director of the Urban Systems Lab, and research faculty at the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School.
He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. He is a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a Contributing Author to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Commission on BiodiverCities. In 2020 he was appointed by NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio to the NYC Panel on Climate Change (NPCC). He studies the ecology in, of, and for cities to advance resilience, sustainability, and justice. His books Urban Planet and Resilient Urban Futures are widely read and his new book Nature-based Solutions for Cities will be out in 2023.
McPhearson was awarded the 2022 Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity as a member of the IPCC and IPBES. In 2020 he was named an NYC Climate Hero by the NYC Department of Transportation and Human Impacts Institute. In 2019 he was awarded the Sustainability Science Award and the Innovation in Sustainability Science Award by the Ecological Society of America. He was awarded the BiodivERsA Prize in 2018 and again in 2021. In 2017 he was awarded the Distinguished University Teaching Award by The New School.
McPhearson has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles in top scientific and interdisciplinary planning journals including in Nature, Nature Climate Change, Nature Sustainability, The Lancet Planetary Health, Landscape and Urban Planning, Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, and Environmental Science and Policy. He has written >30 book chapters, and >50 articles for popular press. He is founding Associate Editor of Nature’s npj Urban Sustainability journal, Associate Editor of Ecology and Society, and on the editorial board of Nature-based Solutions, Urban Transformations and other journals and book series. His work is widely covered in the press including in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, New York Times Magazine, CityLab, Urban Omnibus, The Hill, Science Friday, NBC, PBS Newshour, Voice of America, among others.