Over the last 10 years, he has been central in encouraging research into how climate change affects subtropical cities, where roughly half the world’s population lives. Abbate has branded the problem that subtropical cities face not as a design issue (although design can mitigate some of the environmental devastation that rising water levels and temperatures incur), but as a professional issue for architects. Architects must, Abbate argues, collaborate more effectively with policymakers, biologists, planners, and engineers if some of the largest population centers in the world are going to survive the 21st century.