Author Michael Egan preceded his April 18 lecture, “The History of Now: Decoding Environmental Sustainability,” by taking a refreshing bike ride with Professor of English Onno Oerlemanns.  Later in his talk Egan mentioned that all five of his family members bike to work or school nearly every day.

“Today, more than 50 percent of humanity lives in cities,” said Edward Glaeser, professor of economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.  And while Mohandas Gandhi once intimated that the strength of a country “lives in its villages,” Glaeser explained that he respectfully disagreed, and that “there is no future in rural poverty.”  Rather, it is the city, an urban development defined largely by “high proximity, closeness and density of people,” which enables the “creation of the chains of collaborative brilliance that drive success.”

A panel discussion, “Creating Sustainable Urban Communities in Syracuse and Utica,” will be hosted by the Levitt Center on Thursday, Oct. 27, at 7 p.m., in the Taylor Science Center’s Kennedy Auditorium. The discussion is free and open to the public.

When it comes to hydraulic fracturing, or “hydrofracking,” New York State has taken a “think first, drill later” approach. To engage the Hamilton community in the thinking and learning phase of this process, two panelists explained the basics of hydrofracking in New York at a discussion sponsored by the Levitt Public Affairs Center on Sept. 23.