News

Everywhere, people are deserting the public space. They’re not standing in line at the bank: They’re banking online. They’re not shopping for clothes at the mall: They’re getting clothes mailed to them at home. The internet is enabling people to meet their needs without going out. Librarians have seen this coming for years, and many…

As drought-stricken residents of Los Angeles’s hottest neighborhoods replace thirsty lawns with native plants, pavers and bare soil, new research has shown how their local climates could begin tipping back in the direction of their desert-like origins. Nighttime lows help people recover daily even as heat waves persist. In a region beset this year by…

August was a busy month at the University of Washington and the Seattle region when it comes to urban research, writing, and project launches. Take a look at what’s been happening. Urban@UW will be running a half-day workshop as part of the Eighth International Conference on Social Informatics (SocInfo 2016.) Our workshop seeks to bring…

The University of Washington has begun a yearlong partnership with the City of Auburn, under the new Livable City Year program. UW students and professors will work with the City of Auburn to advance the city’s goals for livability and sustainability throughout the upcoming academic year. In this inaugural year, UW faculty will lead classes…

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded nearly $180,000 for a new summer institute on the urban environment at the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington. The institute, City/Nature: Urban Environmental Humanities, examines how Western cultures have historically viewed city and nature as separate—and how a more integrative understanding can…

Their future depends on answering hard questions about what type of community we want this to be. This is the final piece in a three-part series about the region’s homelessness crisis. Read parts 1 and 2 here and here. It has been over nine months since Seattle Mayor Ed Murray declared a “state of civil…

Students in a UW summer fellowship program called Data Science for Social Good work to coax valuable information from overlooked data, and one potential upshot might be improved bus service. If you’re a regular bus rider, you might think that the area’s transit agencies use the information from your ORCA card to learn which buses…

Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Thaisa Way has been appointed chair of the Dumbarton Oaks Fellows in Garden and Landscape Studies. Way, who has been a Senior Fellow with Dumbarton Oaks since 2011 will serve a one year term.As one of six Senior Fellows, the group serves as advisors to the Director of Dumbarton Oaks…

Marina Alberti is a professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning, which is part of the University of Washington College of Built Environments. Alberti directs the college’s Urban Ecology Research Laboratory and the Graduate School’s interdisciplinary doctoral program in urban design and planning. She answered some questions about her new book, “Cities that…

Much has been said about sidewalks as theaters of urban life. Productive democratic friction between strangers is one of the hallmarks of good city building, yet this vision of a grandly equitable platform for urban life is not without flaws. Sidewalks may appear to be benign slabs of concrete or brick, but as platforms for…