Policymakers worldwide face complex challenges of addressing climate change coupled with water scarcity, environmental pollution, public health, and demands for economic growth. In addressing these multiple and interdependent priorities, sustainability is often sacrificed for immediate gains. China and India account for more than one-quarter of the world’s CO2 emissions from energy use (2008 IEA data). Due to the rapid urbanization in both countries, cities have become the focal point for development as well as climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. Integrated strategies are required to resolve simultaneous demands for growth and sustainability. In studying rapidly urbanizing cities, we can begin to understand the priorities of policy actors and citizens. Papers on this panel use new perspectives and methods to uncover the global and local challenges facing city sustainability in China and India. The first paper by Sperling, Romero-Lankao, and Runfola of the National Center for Atmospheric Research offers an in-depth study of more than 1,200 households in Mumbai, India and seeks to develop an understanding of urban equity, health conditions and sustainable city priorities as relevant to informing opportunities at the mitigation-adaptation nexus. The second paper by Yi and Liu of The Ohio State University uses micro-level data across 23 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, and 4 direct-controlled municipalities in China to 1) establish the link between China’s subnational green energy policies and the number of green jobs in Chinese cities and 2) explain the distribution of green jobs. The third paper by Olofsson, Martel, Heikkila and Weible of the University of Colorado Denver analyzes the framing of air pollution in Delhi, India using automated media analysis and hand-coded narrative analysis. These studies combine to inform how issues of climate change and urbanization are being addressed at multiple levels – global, national, and local – and how policy actors and citizens prioritize drivers for growth and sustainability. Several methods are used to explore the global challenge of climate change and urbanization: qualitative analysis of interviews, inductive and deductive content analysis of media documents, large-N surveys, and regression analysis of national data sets. Combining new methods with more traditional methods offers new perspectives. The researchers are interdisciplinary, drawing from public policy, sociology, engineering, urban planning, ecology, development, and political science. This is a novel way to look at policy issues, considering not only the policy area itself, but also the broader impacts on health, climate, economy, sustainability, and urbanization. Tanya Heikkila of the University of Colorado Denver is serving as Chair of this panel and has experience in working on city-level sustainability issues in China and India. The discussant of this panel is Rachel Krause of the University of Kansas, who is a recognized expert in urban sustainability.