For in-person attendance (general public welcome), complete this form to RSVP. If you do not have an active Columbia ID card, please RSVP before noon on Monday October 20 - you will receive an email from Columbia University Public Safety containing a QR code, which you will be asked to present along with a matching ID at campus gates. Please allow a few extra minutes to pass through campus security. Please note: 300S Buell Hall is reached by three flights of stairs; there is no elevator in the building.

For virtual attendance, register for the webinar here. 

Thursday October 23, 2025 at 12:00pm Eastern Time
300S Buell Hall and online

Jonathan Levy (Sciences Po)

Courtney Bender (Columbia)

Response by Chelsea Spencer (Buell Fellow/ Columbia)

The finitude of planet earth as a natural resource became especially evident in the late 20th Century. In these talks, the scale of the planetary is redesigned in multiple registers, from religion to capital, from urbanity to secularism. Jonathan Levy takes Houston, a largely unzoned city built mostly after 1970, as a scalar test for writing the history of climate change, featuring the financial and architectural imagination of the Hines company. Courtney Bender investigates the secular interests that rebuilt and reorganized religion in the 20th Century via planning, including at the 1939 World’s Fair.