News

A few of the highlights in Urban news for the past week: 195 nations reached a landmark accord that will, for the first time, commit nearly every country to lowering planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions to help stave off the most drastic effects of climate change http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/world/europe/climate-change-accord-paris.html UW announces new Master of Science in Data Science…

A new University of Washington initiative is thinking “upstream” when it comes to creating safer, healthier and more livable cities. Urban@UW aims to bring together UW faculty, staff and students from different disciplines with city decision-makers and citizens to wrestle with urban issues such as housing and poverty, growth and transportation, and food and economic…

Criminals are meant to pay their debts to society through sentencing, but a different type of court-imposed debt can tie them to the criminal justice system for life and impact their ability to move forward with their lives. Though debtors’ prisons were eliminated in the United States almost two centuries ago, a modern-day version exists…

In case you’ve been sleeping for the past week, here are some of the urban news highlights: #COP21 Kicked off in Paris and cities took center stage Newsweek Article > Environmental Historian Christof Mauch came to UW and gave a lecture: ‘How Vulnerable Is Our World? Environmental Sustainability and Lessons from the Past’ Seattle Times…

The University of Washington is among the most sustainable schools in North America, according to the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS). The UW submitted its most recent self-reported assessment this fall and received a gold rating, with a score of 77.47 percent. The UW’s score is the best among Pac-12 universities which have…

“I challenge all of us — students, faculty and staff, and my leadership team — to own both our personal responsibility for the culture of our campus, and the institutional challenges we need to address to combat the racism, both individual and institutional, that persists here and throughout our society.” In April 2015, President Ana…

The Puget Sound watershed — the area west of the Cascades Mountains that stretches from the state capitol up to the Canadian border — is warming. It also faces rising seas, heavier downpours, larger and more frequent floods, more sediment in its rivers, less snow, and hotter, drier summer streams. A new report by the…

When Thaisa Way put a call out last spring to see if University of Washington faculty members working on urban issues wanted to join forces, she wasn’t sure what the response would be. “There were a lot of people who said, ‘You’re not going to get anyone to show up,‘” said Way, a UW associate…

What have we in Seattle learned about Innovation Districts, as we start to create them in places like Pioneer Square and the U District? Knowing that we are growing, what kind of Innovation District do we want? And frankly, what do Innovation Districts have to do with making Seattle a great place to live and…

Edwina “Eddie” Uehara, a University of Washington professor and Ballmer Endowed Dean in Social Work, is eager to facilitate cultural exchanges. Not exchanges of people from different countries or ethnicities, but from disciplines that can be worlds apart: computer technology and social work. “It really is this moment,” said Uehara, “when all of us are…