Michael Cohen

Michael Cohen is Professor of International Affairs and Founding Director of the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School University in New York. He is also Co-Director of the Observatory on Latin America. He worked at the World Bank from 1972 to 1999 and was responsible for formulating much of the World Bank’s urban policy. He worked in 55 countries and was Chief of the Urban Development Division and the Water Supply and Sanitation Division. He led the World Bank’s involvement in the UN Water Decade of the 1980s. He has written widely on development policy issues, urban development, Africa, and Argentina, including two books, Argentina’s Economic Growth and Recovery, and an edited volume, The Global Economic Crisis in Latin America: Impacts and Responses. He was a member of the US National Academy of Sciences Panels on Infrastructure and Urban Demographic Dynamics. He has been actively engaged in international urban policy debates since the Habitat I Conference in 1976 and participated in the Habitat III Conference in Quito in 2016. He has advised the UN, IADB, ADB, AfDB, Ford, Rockefeller, and MacArthur foundations, and many national and local governments.