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Molly O'Meara Sheehan - Senior Researcher


0 Cities, Transportation, Information Technology

Molly O’Meara Sheehan telecommutes to the Institute's Washington, DC office from New York. Before joining Worldwatch in 1996, she researched news stories for the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, assisted a study group on U.S.-Asia relations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and edited documents at Urban Connections, a firm in Tokyo.
Molly has a Master's degree in Environmental Sciences from Johns Hopkins University, and a Bachelor's degree in Biology and Asian Studies from Williams College.

  • “Uniting Divided Cities,” in State of the World, W.W. Norton, 2003.
  • “Where the Sidewalks End,” in World Watch, Vol. 15, No. 6, November/December 2002.
  • City Limits: Putting the Brakes on Sprawl, Worldwatch Paper 156, July 2002.
  • “Dumb Growth,” in World Watch, Vol. 15, No. 1, January/February 2002.
  • “Harnessing Information Technologies for the Environment,” in State of the World, W.W. Norton, 2000.
  • Reinventing Cities for People and the Planet, Worldwatch Paper 147, June 1999.

Molly has spoken about her research at urban conferences in France, Japan, Canada, and Kenya, and in lectures at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, and elsewhere. Recently, she spoke about mapping slums at ESRI’s annual conference of geographic information systems (GIS) users in San Diego, and discussed the role of local governments in “sustainable development” at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

Molly has also contributed to both popular and scholarly publications, including International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, UN Chronicle, Advances in Solar Energy, The Futurist, Journal of Architecture and Building Economics (Architectural Institute of Japan), and The Challenge of Urban Government: Policies and Practices(Washington, DC: World Bank Institute, 2001). Media outlets that have covered her research include CNN, MSNBC, BBC, VOA, ABC Radio, Agence France Presse, Xinhua News Agency, Kyodo News, Washington Post, USA Today, United News of India, and Frankfurter Rundschau.