Photos: Cities go green

The Boston Society of Architects hosted a conference earlier this week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to consider how cities can take steps to address climate change.

Planners from some proactive cities spoke about their efforts, which address many areas, including green buildings, water use, distributed energy generation, and waste reduction.

"We have an opportunity to usher in a new era of municipally owned enterprises around low-carbon technologies," said Nicky Gavron, the former deputy mayor of London.

Cities are an important testing ground for green technologies because urbanization is accelerating rapidly. More than half of the world's population now lives in cities--and most population growth in coming decades will happen there, mostly in developing countries.

Will cities of the future look like Beijing, pictured here?