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With a neatly trimmed moustache and white doctor’s coat, Dr. Krzysztof Czarnobilski, head of internal medicine and elder care at Kraków’s MSWiA Hospital, speaks nervously, his English formal and stilted. His message, though, couldn’t be clearer. The filthy air in Poland’s most picturesque city is making his elderly patients sick ...

In Krakow, Poland, lawmakers recently banned the burning of coal to heat homes after activists pressured them with a Facebook campaign that drew 20,000 followers. Driven by a survey that showed the city's air to be the third dirtiest in Europe, the small group of volunteers worked late into the evenings, on top of their day jobs, in an effort that had no funding at all until weeks after its big victory.

The European Union has long been a world leader on climate change, and its new agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 keeps it at the forefront of that effort. But experts question whether the plans European leaders have sketched out are strong enough to meet their ambitious goal, and even whether a 40 percent cut is enough to keep the Continent on track toward its longer-term target.

From his high-profile smoking and transfat bans to the creation of new parks and bike lanes, Michael Bloomberg's 12 years as mayor were a time of innovation and change in New York. Besides such high-profile measures, there were also less visible efforts, like the drafting of a long-term resiliency plan for city.

Rotterdam is Europe's largest port, a gritty Dutch metropolis with a long history as a commercial hub and a flair for modern architecture. Ho Chi Minh City, half a world away in Vietnam, is a fast-growing megacity clogged with motorbikes; an extraordinary mixture of old and new, rich and poor.

What do a $1 pair of glasses, a rough-terrain wheelchair built with bicycle parts and a fish farm in a shipping container have in common?