I came to IAS with genuine pleasure, after leaving research years ago convinced my unruly curiosity made me unfit for academia—only to find here that such tendencies were no handicap but a strength.

The effects of the Anthropocene—climate change, biodiversity loss, and more—are strongly urban, both in their origins and in the places where they strike hardest. Most emissions come from cities. Without the great urbanisation of the Industrial Revolution, we would not face today’s peril. In plainer words: an urbanising planet leaves a swelling ecological footprint.

Nation-states are imagined communities—yet no less real in their effects. Cities, by contrast, are vast physical systems increasingly open to study through network and complexity science. Such inquiry could fill a gap in the literature on which institutions like the IPCC base their assessments. A sharper scientific grasp—mathematical and empirical—of the global ensemble of city systems would allow far more targeted interventions, locally and globally. I suspect that one promising lever for altering the course of the Anthropocene is to sharpen our focus on cities as a central empirical phenomenon within climate science.

This brings me to the second topic. In some ways it is the same problem, but seen through a frameshift that I find, alongside a more rigorous scientific footing, to be epistemically generative: the phronetic view developed in practice. The frameshift is this: leaving the vantage of all the connected (urban) ant-nests and entering the mind of one ant—or, rather, a small group of organized ants - the municipal government. From the viewpoint of a municipal agent, where are the strategic intervention points? This is the question I also pursue in my practitioner’s day-job: how can municipal systems bring themselves within planetary boundaries? One promising bet is for such systems to invest structurally in ways that, by revealed preference, look further ahead: financing transition, avoiding stranded assets, and—above all—limiting the harms of anthropogenic change. Today’s financial techniques reflect historical contingencies and vested interests. While institutional design cannot be infinitely flexible, it can certainly change. Such innovations must be tried locally, within the constraints of complex organisations—yet always with scale-ups in mind, for those elements that can travel readily from one site to the next. In my mind, a clearer view of how cities affect the Anthropocene goes hand in hand with a perspective on how they can develop within planetary boundaries. Different ontologies endorse different courses of action.

At IAS I found the chance to pursue both themes at once—questions that will occupy me for a long time to come.

The social and intellectual environment of IAS was invaluable—directly and indirectly shaping my thinking, and giving me an enduring sense of vitality. Several seminars and workshops proved directly relevant, introducing modes of representing and thought that widened my perspective and made my ideas more robust. The visit of Stanford’s Paul Edwards—whose A Vast Machine I admire—and a climate workshop by IAS-fellow Fabian Dablander with keynotes from Doyne Farmer and Joyeeta Gupta stood out. Other meetings—on topics far from my own, whether at IAS or in the DIEP network—were just as rich in experience. Conversations in the common rooms with other fellows were stimulating and joyful.

A challenge I faced was planning and organization. Some events I arranged went very well, drawing bright and enthusiastic participants whose exchange inspired me and advanced my thinking. Yet I had to cancel one workshop. Balancing the policy fellowship with full-time employment, and compounded by my own suboptimal planning—despite excellent IAS support—I had to postpone it to the coming academic year. I am grateful for the renewed opportunity.

IAS reminded me that we live in a time when policy and academic practice can greatly enrich one another: transaction costs of exchange are falling, while societal challenges demand the full thinking capacity our society can muster. I hope to play a role in brokering ties between communities, fostering more structured exchanges, and perhaps dissolving some disciplinary boundaries to enable richer dialogue.

From what I have seen, IAS offers the space to build on whatever one brings. The community is engaging, accessible, and hospitable to a wide diversity of minds. I had grown somewhat disengaged from academia, and my time at IAS as a policy fellow let me reappreciate what I once valued in that world.

Outputs

· Kick-off lecture The Anthropocene is Largely Urban-driven. Can we Invest City Systems Back Within Planetary Boundaries.

· Workshop The Financially Sustainable City - on the overlap between green ambitions and robust long-term public finances. Session with municipal financial practitioners, finance experts and academics.

· Philosophy session: The End is Immanent: how nothing can really happen (new work by dr. Mark Leegsma).

· Workshop: How to Bring the Urban into Climate Science (forthcoming). Examining how an urban science could benefit, say, the next IPCC-report.