Explores the wide array of political questions that are raised when we view the Earth's environment as an integrated, global system.

Historical roots of the idea of development; economic theories of growth and their implications for sustainability; interrelationship among population growth, food security, poverty, inequality, urbanization, technological change, international trade, and environmental change at local, regional and global scale.

Human and physical processes shaping urban ecologies and environments; human-environment interactions in the context of an urban region; effect of the institution and regulatory framework on the ability of social and urban-ecological systems to be resilient and sustainable; urban design, materials, transport, planning, and regulation.

Sustainable engineering; overall energy needs and impacts; thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanisms; atmospheric energy systems; field investigation; current and future urban energy systems.

Application of economic principles to the allocation of environmental goods and services, external environmental effects, and environmental public goods; decision-making under uncertainty, adaptation to and mitigation of environmental change.

How human activities and management practices alter biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and the provisioning of ecosystem services; use of economic and other social science perspectives to estimate the value of ecosystem services; evaluation of options for achieving the sustainable flow of services from ecosystems.