Faculty

Profile

Michael Cohen (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Director of the PhD in Public and Urban Policy program at the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment, and professor of international affairs at the Julien J. Studley Graduate Programs in International Affairs.

Before coming to The New School in 2001, he was a Visiting Fellow of the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University. From 1972 to 1999, he had a distinguished career at the World Bank. He was responsible for much of the urban policy development of the Bank over that period and, from 1994-1998, he served as the Senior Advisor to the Bank's Vice-President for Environmentally Sustainable Development. He has worked in over fifty countries and was heavily involved in the Bank's work on infrastructure, environment, and sustainable development. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Panel on Urban Dynamics.

He is the author or editor of several books, including most recently Preparing the Urban Future: Global Pressures and Local Forces (ed. with A. Garland, B. Ruble, and J. Tulchin), The Human Face of the Urban Environment (ed. with I. Serageldin), Urban Policy and Economic Development: An Agenda for the 1990s, and most recently, Argentina’s Economic Growth and Recovery: The Economy in a Time of Default (Routledge, 2012)and an edited volume, The Global Economic Crisis in Latin America: Impacts and Response, (Routledge, 2012).  Other publications include articles in 25 Years of Urban Development (Amersfoort, The Netherlands, 1998), Cities Fit for People (Kirdar, ed., 1996), The Brookings Review, Journal of the Society for the Study of Traditional Environments, International Social Science Review, Habitat International, and Finance and Development. He has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, The Johns Hopkins University, and the School of Architecture, Design, and Urban Planning of the University of Buenos Aires.

Degrees Held

PhD 1971, Political Economy, University of Chicago