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Community, Environment, and Planning

News | March 30, 2020

Bringing the Lens of Hip Hop to Urban Planning

Urban planning is in itself an interdisciplinary field, but UW Community, Environment, and Planning (CEP) senior Aury Banos is pushing its interdisciplinary lens even further. For her senior project Aury is connecting hip hop lyrics and artists to urban planning and the built environment. “I was inspired by Michael Ford’s lecture on hip hop and…


News | January 23, 2024

Building community resilience: A $2 million NSF grant will transform disaster response

Amy Sprague January 16, 2024 “Our advantage of being an interdisciplinary project at the University of Washington is that we are drawing from an excellent corps of researchers with complementary expertise at a University whose mission includes working for the greater good across the state of Washington and has excellent ties into our communities.” Professor…


News | May 1, 2019

Central District, other Seattle legacy communities are at risk — and we all need to help save them

In a new documentary about gentrification in the Central District, “On the Brink,” an advocate of Seattle’s historically African American neighborhood talks about recent construction projects in the area digging the soul out of that community. … The CD became a nearly 80% black neighborhood in the late 1960s and early ’70s because African Americans,…


Scholar

Christopher Campbell

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News | May 5, 2020

Cities and the SARS CoV2 coronavirus in the Global South: Breaking points in an interconnected system

Since COVID-19 first erupted in China in December and began spreading across the world, the pandemic’s early outbreaks have “burned hottest in the richer, globalized quarters of the world linked by busy commercial air routes—Europe and the United States.” (National Geographic, 2020a [website]) Now, four months into the pandemic, compounding factors of urban density and…


News | June 8, 2022

College of Built Environments’ unique Inspire Fund aims to foster research momentum in underfunded pursuits college-wide. And it’s working.

“For a small college, CBE has a broad range of research paradigms, from history and arts, to social science and engineering.” — Carrie Sturts Dossick, Associate Dean of Research Upon taking on the role of Associate Dean of Research, Carrie Sturts Dossick, professor in the Department of Construction Management, undertook listening sessions to learn about…


Degree Program

Community, Environment & Planning (BA)

Community, Environment, and Planning is a self-directed, diverse undergraduate major comprised of students, faculty, and staff engaged in holistic growth and a collaborative process of experiential and interdisciplinary learning. In our major, we develop skills, techniques, and knowledge necessary to be active leaders and conscientious planners in our communities and environments. Our values are presented…

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Course | CEP 473 / URBDP 573

Digital Design Practicum

Uses digital technologies for mapping, drafting, modeling, and communication. Includes real-world case study projects that focus on urban design and planning issues.

News | February 1, 2024

History uncovered: UW research finds thousands of past racial restrictions in Kitsap

Reported in The Kitsap Sun By Peiyu Lin It’s not a secret that Kitsap County possesses a history of segregation, where some areas of the peninsula were only allowed to sell or rent to white people in the early and mid-20th century. But a specific geographic distribution of the over 2,300 properties that carry racial…


News | July 29, 2024

How Tiny Homes Could Help Solve America’s Homelessness Crisis

Reported by Giulia Carbonaro for Newsweek Shelter villages of tiny homes have popped up across the U.S. in recent years, as the small structures have started to be seen by many advocates as a promising solution to solve homelessness. Perhaps unsurprisingly at a time when mortgage rates are still hovering around the 7-percent mark and…


News | July 11, 2019

Informal housing, poverty, and legacies of apartheid in South Africa

“Ten percent of all South Africans — the majority white — owns more than 90 percent of national wealth… Some 80 percent of the population — overwhelmingly black — owns nothing at all.” — New York Times On April 27, 1994, Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) won the first multiracial democratic election…


Course | CEP 200

Introduction to Community, Environment & Planning

Introduction to central themes of major. Opportunities to engage in community action and planning process, while developing ecological literacy. Lectures, discussions, and critical writing exercises combine to increase knowledge and interest in these fields. Emphasis on developing community of learners in and out of classroom setting.

News | June 13, 2019

Livable City Year celebrates partnership with City of Bellevue

This year’s Livable City Year partnership with the City of Bellevue mobilized 285 students from a variety of schools and colleges, representing all three UW campuses, to work on 30 projects in the city. The students’ research, findings and recommendations were on display at a celebration at Bellevue City Hall on Monday, June 3. The Bellevue City…


News | January 19, 2024

Longevity without vitality: Americans live longer but endure declining health

From KEPR TV By Janae Bowens WASHINGTON (TND) – Americans are living longer, but are also sick for more of their lives. Analysis from the Wall Street Journal‘s Alex Janin shows the estimated average of life spent in good health declined to 83.6% in 2021, which is down from 85.8% in 1990. This is all…


News | March 16, 2020

Making Transit More Transparent: Catching Up with Kona Farry

Kona Farry is an undergraduate student at UW studying Community, Environment, and Planning. Last year Farry created a website (https://www.pantographapp.com) showing the real-time locations of buses, ferries, and trains in the greater Seattle area that received a lot of interest. (Also, since the coronavirus outbreak he has created an app to help remind people to…


News | March 15, 2024

Neighborhood Poverty May Impact Women’s Ovarian Reserves

Reported by Lori Solomon at Health Day News FRIDAY, March 15, 2024 — Living in a neighborhood with greater poverty in adulthood is tied to lower ovarian reserve, according to a study published online March 5 in Menopause. Anwesha Pan, from the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues aimed to examine the association between…


News | February 1, 2024

New nonpartisan AI nonprofit TrueMedia, led by Oren Etzioni, is making a political deepfake detector

Published in GeekWire By Todd Bishop A new nonprofit, nonpartisan technology organization called TrueMedia is developing an AI-powered tool to detect deepfake videos, photos, and audio, aiming to combat political disinformation in the leadup to the 2024 elections. Founded and led by Oren Etzioni, University of Washington professor and former CEO of the Allen Institute…


News | January 19, 2024

Northwest innovators chase the dream of greener concrete

From The Seattle Times By Mike Lindblom PULLMAN — From a onetime speakeasy in North Seattle to a modern lab in the Palouse, inventors are testing recipes that make concrete less lethal to Earth’s climate. Most people understand that the world’s 1.4 billion fossil-fueled cars and trucks spew carbon dioxide, trapping heat in the atmosphere….


News | February 1, 2024

Should social media pay for addicting kids? Seattle schools lawsuit gains steam

Reported by KUOW Written by Sami West A year into Seattle Public Schools’ lawsuit against social media companies, the case is gaining traction. More than 50 school districts in Washington state — and dozens more across the country — have joined Seattle’s lawsuit. Seattle became the first district to sue social media platforms last January,…


News | February 16, 2024

Student Housing Has a New Mantra: Bigger Is Better

Written by Kevin Williams for The New York Times Off-campus complexes are getting larger, with some being home to more than 1,500 students, and being built on prime parcels of land as close to campus as possible. When the Standard, an off-campus student housing complex, opened in the fall in Bloomington, Ind., welcoming its first…


News | March 19, 2024

To report or not report ‘suspicious people’ near campus

Originally reported in The Daily by Shira Sur It took three encounters with a person threatening bypassers near the West Campus dorms for first-year student Hannah Whitemarsh to call 911. Whitemarsh’s call to UWPD, which was made in mid-October of 2023, was transferred to the Seattle Police Department (SPD). After she was asked whether the…


Course | CEP 470 / URBDP 502

Tools for Sustainable Cities

Examines specific tools used for planning sustainable cities, including hands-on learning, speakers, case studies, and site tours to enrich students' knowledge and experience.

News | February 16, 2024

Transit workers fight drugs on buses and trains

Written by Joseph Gallivan for Axios Oregon Transit companies are pushing to make it a Class A misdemeanor to use drugs on buses and trains in Oregon. TriMet, the Oregon Transit Association, and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757 testified yesterday to support amending Senate Bill 1553. The amendment would add the use of illicit drugs…


News | March 27, 2019

You can now see all transit in Seattle on one map, at the same time

Ever wanted to see every bus, ferry, street car and light rail line operating in Seattle and throughout the greater Puget Sound region on one map at the same time? Kona Farry, a junior at the University of Washington originally from Marysville, did — so he did something about it. “It occurred to me that with all of…