Infrastructure & Transportation

News | May 26, 2021

‘Rain gardens’ turn backyards into water treatment facilities, benefiting marine life

Seattle’s frequent rainfall is responsible for much of the region’s natural beauty, from old-growth forests to the creeks and rivers that flow into Puget Sound and the Salish Sea. But rain can also be catastrophic to area ecosystems. When precipitation falls on roofs, roads, and other hard surfaces, it sweeps pollutants like heavy metals directly…

News | September 5, 2017

‘Smart’ campuses invest in the Internet of Things

As campus executives start to develop their IoT strategies, it is not just CIOs who have to be involved. Sometimes, facilities groups have their own IT executives working on data pipelines from IoT devices. Chuck Benson, assistant director for IT in Facilities Services at the University of Washington, chairs a campuswide IoT risk mitigation task…

News | August 5, 2019

‘I’d drink my jacuzzi’: how earthquake scientists prepare for the ‘big one’

Two back-to-back earthquakes, of magnitude 6.4 and 7.1, hit southern California in less than 24 hours last month, and seismologists have warned of an increased chance of more shaking in the near future. We spoke with four earthquake scientists living in high-risk areas to see what the people who think about earthquakes the most plan to do…

News | August 14, 2019

‘Vehicle ranching’ in Seattle: Inside the underground market of renting RVs to homeless people

Richard Winn considered himself a decent landlord, particularly in a cutthroat rental market like Seattle’s. Sometimes his tenants did not pay their $75 weekly rent, and weren’t required to sign a lease or put down a deposit. But there were trade-offs. Winn never gave residents keys to their units. Tenants were not to use the…

News | October 8, 2020

163 veteran Metro bus drivers are retiring, taking 4,400 combined years of memories

You bet they have the stories. Decades of them. They’re a group with at least 4,400 combined years of memories. They’re the 163 older King County Metro bus drivers who this summer applied and were approved for a “voluntary separation” package, although that number might increase a bit. It meant saving the jobs of younger…

News | September 7, 2021

2021 Urban@UW Spark Grants awardees announced

Urban@UW is excited to announce awardees for the second round of funding through our Spark Grants program. The two projects selected address critical urban challenges, with a focus on transdisciplinary scholarship and engagement with vulnerable populations.    Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Among Vehicle Residents: A Case Study of the Seattle Public Utilities’ Recreational Vehicle Wastewater…

News | January 14, 2022

2021: The deadliest and most dangerous year on Washington’s roads since 2006

As Washington went quiet in the early days of the pandemic, Staci Hoff figured at least it would mean fewer deaths on the roads in 2020. She was wrong. Then, as cars began returning in 2021, she hoped maybe the carnage would slow as congestion increased and speeds decreased. She was wrong again. Washington ended…

News | March 6, 2021

2021’s best cities to own an electric car

Originally written for LawnStarter. You likely have seen more electric vehicles on the road, at stoplights, and charging in grocery store lots and parking garages. But some U.S. cities have embraced the electric car faster than others. With huge differences in tax incentives, electricity costs, and charging infrastructure, the convenience of electric vehicle (EV) driving…

News | October 18, 2018

4 fresh ideas to ease Seattle’s coming traffic nightmare

Seattle is doomed — at least in terms of its traffic for at least the next three years. Already, morning and evening gridlock seems to start earlier and end later. I-5 through downtown is nearly always jammed up. Overloaded buses wait through multiple light cycles attempting to inch through intersections at rush hour. And it’s…

News | July 31, 2019

4.6 earthquake shakes Seattle region, no damage reported

A magnitude 4.6 earthquake shook Seattle and the Puget Sound region at 2:51 a.m. Friday, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), rattling some people out of bed, while leaving other people blissfully dormant and unfazed. The earthquake emanated from Three Lakes, Snohomish County, about 9 miles east of downtown Everett. The temblor raises…

News | September 20, 2018

5 architectural approaches that are shaping the way we live

Mary Johnston notices the big-city big picture, and the subtler, smaller, neighborhood-level pixels that shape it. But then, she’s an architect — she and her husband, Ray Johnston, founded Johnston Architects in 1991 — and plugged-in visionaries have a way of noticing things. “Architects tend to be canaries in the coal mine,” she says. “We start to…

News | March 31, 2020

A decade of punishment and heavy traffic catches up to the West Seattle Bridge

Most mornings in the last decade, travelers on the West Seattle Bridge could see a menagerie of box trucks delivering food, 25-ton buses aligned nose to tail, flatbeds of steel rebar and hordes of cars, vans and pickups. It turns out, we may have loved the concrete span to death. The Seattle Department of Transportation…

News | March 10, 2018

A Homeless Camp in Our Back Yard? Please, a University Says

For months, 65 homeless people lived in tents they set up in a parking lot behind the Seattle Pacific University bookstore, with a row of portable toilets and layers of clothes to guard against the damp chill of winter. It was a homeless camp like so many that crop up along roads and ramshackle lots…

News | March 19, 2024

A New ‘Holy Grail’ in the Housing Crisis: Statewide Rent Caps

Reported in The New York Times by David W. Chen As housing costs soar, Washington State wants to limit annual rent increases to 7 percent. Oregon and California have passed similar measures.   With her husband struggling at times to find work, Ms. Horn has maxed out her credit cards to keep pace with the…

News | October 29, 2021

A new tool suggests we’re underestimating the environmental cost of new roads

The infrastructure bill being hammered out in D.C. will fund a lot of road projects, including some in Washington State. But it’s difficult to reduce our carbon emissions when we keep building more highways. That’s what inspired a network of environmental groups to build a calculator that shows how much air pollution is caused by…

News | February 13, 2020

A Popular Beach in Tacoma is Being Redesigned Based on Climate Change Projections

Climate change projections of rising sea levels is one reason Tacoma is making major changes to one of its most popular beaches. It is using research from the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group to redesign Owen Beach at Point Defiance Park. Research from UW shows with continued high greenhouse gas emissions, by 2100 the global…

News | May 5, 2020

A timber-based building method draws praise, and skeptics

Last September, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee stepped to a lectern in a sprawling 270,000-square-foot factory outside Spokane and declared it the “best day so far” in his six years in office. Earlier that day, he had marched downtown as part of the youth-driven climate strike that united 4 million people worldwide. Now he was in nearby…

News | July 7, 2020

A/B Streets game lets you create the Seattle street grid of your dreams

It seems like a lifetime ago when we could just leave the house and go places, whether on foot or bike or (if we must) car. And as much as one might long for a return to normal-times, let’s not forget that normalcy also involved such headaches as congestion, traffic sewers, long waits for buses,…

Scholar

Aaron Luoma

News | November 18, 2020

Accessible pedestrian routing tools expand to three Washington cities

Whether navigating urban spaces with different abilities, or simply seeking a walking or biking path that prioritizes specifications other than the quickest route and shortest distance, having access to standardized, comprehensive data about pedestrian pathways offers wide-ranging benefits. However, this information is often difficult to find due to local variations in data collection, inconsistencies and…

Research Beyond UW | University of Cape Town

African Centre for Cities

The African Centre for Cities (ACC) is an interdisciplinary research and teaching programme focused on quality scholarship regarding the dynamics of unsustainable urbanisation processes in Africa, with an eye on identifying systemic responses. Rapid and poorly governed urbanization in Africa points to a profound developmental and philosophical crisis. Most scholarship focuses on the development challenges…

News | June 22, 2020

Air pollution ebbs during the pandemic in Washington state

Kristi Straus, a lecturer in the University of Washington’s College of Environmental Studies program, said reduced traffic and work commutes have likely lowered nitrogen dioxide pollution and improved people’s quality of life during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Certainly commuting is a big way we spend our time and burn fossil fuels,” she said. “The reduced traffic…

News | February 1, 2022

Air pollution from planes, roads infiltrates schools and can be dramatically reduced with portable air filters

What started as a University of Washington-led project to measure air pollution near Sea-Tac International Airport has led to schools in the area installing portable air filters to improve indoor air quality. First, UW researchers found they were able to parse aircraft pollution from roadway pollution in the communities under Sea-Tac International Airport flight paths and map…

Scholar

Alan Borning

Scholar

Ali Modarres

Funding

Amazon Catalyst Grant

Amazon Catalyst’s goal is to help people develop solutions to key problems faced in the world today. Problems can be diverse, from computer security, to immigration, to climate change. Because issues like these are complex, solutions will come from many different fields and many different perspectives. Therefore, the grants are open to all disciplines, including…

Scholar

Amelia C Regan

News | June 12, 2017

American poverty is moving to the suburbs

In his inaugural address, US president Donald Trump listed out the problems he saw in a declining America. At the top of his list: “Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities.” It was not the first time Trump had spoken of urban poverty. “Our inner cities are a disaster,” Trump said in…

News | September 23, 2019

Americans would rather drive themselves to work than have an autonomous vehicle drive them, study says

Many Americans use a ride-hailing service — like Uber or Lyft — to get to and from work. It provides the privacy of riding in a personal car and the convenience of catching up on emails or social media during traffic jams. In the future, self-driving vehicles could provide the same service, except without a…

News | April 21, 2020

Amid a pandemic, geography returns with a vengeance

The pandemic is redefining our relationship with space. Not outer space, but physical space. Hot spots, distance, spread, scale, proximity. In a word: geography. Suddenly, we can’t stop thinking about where. Over the past few centuries, new technologies in transportation and communication made geography feel less critical. The advent of railway and refrigerated train cars in the…

Scholar

Andy Dannenberg

Scholar

Anne Goodchild

News | May 28, 2020

Annual innovation report details Seattle’s growing tech and science ecosystem

The latest Seattle Tech Ecosystem Report shows that the region’s innovation ecosystem continues to grow, though the short and long-term effects of COVID-19 crisis are still to be determined. The fifth annual report from the University of Washington-Bothell School of Business and iInnovate Network provides an overview of the tech, health, and life sciences activity in and around Seattle. It cites…

Map

Aqueduct: Measuring and Mapping Water Risk (World Resources Institute)

Water scarcity is one of the defining issues of the 21st century. In its Global Risks 2013 report, the World Economic Forum identified water supply crises as one of the highest impact and most likely risks facing the planet. With the support of a diverse group of partners, the World Resources Institute built Aqueduct to…

News | September 8, 2023

Armed with Traffic Cones, Protestors Are Immobilizing Driverless Cars

All it takes to render the technology-packed self-driving car inoperable is a traffic cone. If all goes according to plan, it will stay there, frozen, until someone comes and removes it. An anonymous activist group called Safe Street Rebel is responsible for this so-called coning incident and dozens of others over the past few months….

Scholar

Arthur Acolin

News | September 5, 2018

Artificial intelligence can estimate an area’s obesity levels by analyzing its buildings

Two researchers from the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation have found a way to estimate a US city’s obesity level without having to look at its inhabitants. The duo trained an artificial intelligence algorithm to find the relationship between a city’s infrastructure and obesity levels using satellite and Street View images…

News | April 3, 2017

As Central District gets whiter, new barriers to health care

Last week while lawmakers in Washington, D.C., were gnashing their teeth over what health insurance in the U.S. should look like, patients and providers in King County were wrestling with some of the same challenges they faced before the Affordable Care Act was in place.   In 2014, students in King County who are black,…

News | July 6, 2017

As metro areas grow, whites move farther from the city center

In the middle of the 20th century, cities began to change. The popularity of the automobile and the construction of interstate highways fueled the growth of suburbs, while discriminatory housing policies segregated neighborhoods and helped create the phenomenon of “white flight” away from downtowns. Decades later, the average white person still lives farther from the…

News |

As metro areas grow, whites move farther from the city center

In the middle of the 20th century, cities began to change. The popularity of the automobile and the construction of interstate highways fueled the growth of suburbs, while discriminatory housing policies segregated neighborhoods and helped create the phenomenon of “white flight” away from downtowns. Decades later, the average white person still lives farther from the…

News | December 3, 2019

As more people use RVs as homes, should cities find a place for them?

Graham Pruss is familiar with the trials and tribulations of living out of an RV. As part of his research for his anthropology PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle, Pruss bought and lived in an RV for five months. Within the first 12 hours of doing so, he says, police issued him tickets and former…

Scholar

Barb Ivanov

Scholar

Behçet Açikmeşe

News | April 20, 2017

Bellevue, Renton Among Top 100 U.S Cities for Livability

​Watch as King 5 News brings in Branden Born to shed light on the weighting mechanisms employed by a survey recently published on livability.com which ranked Renton and Bellevue among their top 100 cities for livability. Watch the whole clip on iQmediacorp.com

Scholar

Benjamin Brunjes

Scholar

Bethany Gordon

News | January 26, 2017

Big data and human services workshop resources

On January 17-18 Urban@UW, UW eScience Institute, the City of Seattle, and the MetroLab Network hosted a workshop on big data and human services. Check out the presentations and videos of our conversations at MetroLab’s workshop materials page.

News | January 9, 2017

Big Data and Human Services: A Brief Annotated Reading List

On January 17-18th 2017, the Metrolab workshop on Big Data and Human Services hosted by City of Seattle, MetroLab Network, and the University of Washington will convene experts from local government and universities to discuss common challenges and propose collaborative, data-driven solutions to human service issues. Urban@UW has compiled a brief reading list to help…

News | January 14, 2017

Big data to help human services: Topic of UW, City of Seattle event Jan. 17

Using big data to address human services ― including health, foster care and the challenges of homelessness ― will be the focus of a workshop next week at Seattle City Hall hosted by the University of Washington and City of Seattle along with MetroLab Network, a recent White House initiative to improve cities through university-city…

News | May 21, 2020

Bike commuting accelerated when bike-share systems rolled into town

In the past couple of years, if you lived in a major, or even mid-sized city, you were likely familiar with bike-share bikes. Whether propped against a tree, strewn along the sidewalk or standing “docked” at a station, the often brightly colored bikes with whimsical company names promised a ready means to get from Point…

News | July 25, 2017

Birds versus buildings: Rural structures pose greater relative threat than urban ones

About one billion birds are killed every year when they unwittingly fly into human-made objects such as buildings with reflective windows. Such collisions are the largest unintended human cause of bird deaths worldwide — and they are a serious concern for conservationists. A new paper published in June in the journal Biological Conservation finds that,…

Funding

Bridge Funding Program

The University of Washington Provost’s Office provides bridge funding to support faculty to span the gap in critical research programs. Applications from faculty should be submitted to the applicant’s department chair, who should prioritize requests before forwarding them to the dean of the college/school. In non-departmentalized colleges/schools, applications should be submitted to the dean or…

News | February 20, 2020

Building Codes for ‘The Really Big One’ in Seattle

Earthquake experts say current building codes don’t reflect the riskiest features of the Seattle area’s geology — but the outlook for survivability looks a lot better if the Really Big One can just hold off for a few more years. The Cascadia subduction zone, centered along a submarine fault just off the West Coast, is…

News | April 21, 2021

Building for sustainability

For civil engineering doctoral student Nathalie Thelemaque, it’s not enough to research how to design a building or a bridge. Thelemaque wants to know the impact of infrastructure systems on the climate and marginalized communities and help create more sustainable ones. It’s an issue so important that it even helped change her mind from considering a career in…

News | May 24, 2021

Built on pudding: Can modern quake engineering prevail?

This is the second of three stories about a little-known geologic fault that could trigger a major earthquake in Snohomish and Island counties. EVERETT — You’re strolling across a flat sandy beach, on the wet part, where the waves roll in and out. You stop to wiggle your toes. You sink. In an earthquake, this can happen…

News | September 17, 2018

Bus battle: Do private shuttles affect the reliability of public transit?

While many Puget Sound residents have to choose between taking public transit or personal vehicles to work, Microsoft and Seattle Children’s Hospital employees have an additional option: private commuter buses. Last year, King County Metro and the Seattle Department of Transportation started a pilot program that allowed these shuttles to pick up employees at a few public bus…

News | July 18, 2019

Bus PASS: Testing pedestrian collision avoidance technology

Already, many cars have sensors on board that help drivers avoid collisions. But not many commercial vehicles do. With pedestrian fatalities due to collisions, on the rise, the Federal Transit Administration is working on a “Pedestrian Avoidance Safety System: ‘PASS’ for short. And it picked Virginia Tech’s Transportation Institute to give it a test drive….

News | December 4, 2018

Can an app help avoid bike-car collisions on the Burke-Gilman Trail? UW students are testing it

The possibility of a crash occurs every few minutes at the Burke-Gilman Trail: A bicyclist is cruising past alders and maples that conceal traffic. A motorist has just turned toward Lake Washington, and can’t see trail users approaching the road from either side. In the future, a navigation app might warn them both, if an…

News | August 21, 2019

Can Project Sidewalk use crowdsourcing to help Seattleites get around?

Jon Froehlich distinctly remembers the moment when Google first unveiled Street View in 2007. The computer scientist spent hours virtually wandering through distant city streets and immersing himself in parts of the world he had yet to visit in real life. Then Froehlich had a thought: “What else could we use this for?” Within a decade, he’d developed…

News | April 14, 2020

Can Rainier Beach develop without displacing its residents?

Catch the light rail southbound, and when you erupt from the tunnel after Beacon Hill station, you see a city shifting: multicolored duplexes and mixed-use buildings. Continue, though, and development dissipates. In Rainier Beach, Seattle’s southernmost neighborhood, empty lots and old buildings flank the tracks. “Many of the things we were told would occur as…

News | November 9, 2017

Can Seattle rezone away the racial divide in housing?

For generations, Seattle was segregated through racist neighborhood covenants, deed restrictions, even banking policies designed to keep certain minorities out of largely white enclaves.Yet nearly 50 years after the landmark Fair Housing Act sought to reverse that legacy, the city remains strikingly separated along color lines. A Seattle Times analysis shows that areas dedicated to…

News | August 7, 2019

Can tiny houses help solve affordability crisis? A student who’s building one thinks so

Olivia Tyrnauer adjusts the ladder and carefully begins to climb, balancing on the steps as she carries a large window up to an empty frame. Positioned precariously on one of the top steps, she loops a screw gun out of her belt and pulls a screw from one of the pockets of her tan cargo…

News | January 9, 2019

Carbon accountability: progress in work to reduce embodied carbon in construction materials

“We acknowledge that we hold this world in trust and recognize the immediate threat climate change and its impacts pose to current and future generations,” reads a statement signed this fall by more than 100 construction-related companies and nonprofits. “We must act urgently and collaboratively to transform the built environment from a leading driver of…

News | August 27, 2021

Cargo bikes hold promise for speedier, less polluting package delivery

As online shopping grows, so do the number of double-parked delivery vans blocking traffic in cities and adding carbon emissions into the air. To curb both pollution and street congestion, a new report suggests that logistics companies should be investing more in electric cargo bikes as an alternative. In city centers, the study found that…

News | October 18, 2016

Cars vs health: UW’s Moudon, Dannenberg contribute to Lancet series on urban planning, public health

Automobiles — and the planning and infrastructure to support them — are making our cities sick, says an international group of researchers now publishing a three-part series in the British medical journal The Lancet. University of Washington professors Anne Vernez Moudon and Andrew Dannenberg are co-authors of the first of this series that explores these…

Map | Berlin

Carsharing in Berlin

​Many thing carsharing is the future and this map gives us a glimpse of what that may look like in Berlin. with a great explanation of the whole project. This project uses a number of graphic representation styles fueled by CartoDB and Tableau.

Center & Lab

Cascadia Urban Analytics Collaborative

Over 80% of the planet is affected by increased urbanization – a clarion call for evidence-based innovation to improve the resiliency, health,and well-being of cities and their inhabitants. To lead a focused response, the University of Washington (through a partnership between the UW eScience Institute and Urban@UW) and the University of British Columbia (through a…

Scholar

Cecilia Aragon

Research Beyond UW | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Center for Advanced Urbanism

The Center for Advanced Urbanism is committed to fostering a rigorous design culture for the large scale; by focusing our disciplinary conversations about architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture, and systems thinking, not about the problems of yesterday, but of tomorrow. We are motivated by the radical changes in our environment, and the role that design…

Center & Lab

Center for Education and Research in Construction (CERC)

The Center for Education and Research in Construction (CERC) is a locus of research, scholarship and discovery in the UW’s Department of Construction Management and allied disciplines of architecture, engineering and real estate. Focused on the people and practices of a dynamic, innovative construction industry, CERC develops new concepts and innovative solutions as well as…

Center & Lab

Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE)

The Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE) supports population research and training at the University of Washington. It also functions as a regional center that gives population scientists at affiliated institutions in the Pacific Northwest access to cutting-edge demographic infrastructure and services. The core of CSDE consists of a large group of productive…

Center & Lab

Center for Urban Waters

Research conducted by University of Washington Tacoma scientists at the Center for Urban Waters seeks to understand and quantify the sources, pathways and impacts of chemical pollutants in urban waterways.Highly sensitive analytical tools to measure contaminant levels are combined with sophisticated computer models to track pollutant sources and transport in the Puget Sound region. UW…

Research Beyond UW | University of Toronto

Centre for Urban & Community Studies

The Centre for Urban and Community Studies (CUCS) was established in 1964 to promote and disseminate multidisciplinary research and policy analysis on urban issues. The Centre's activities contributed to scholarship on questions relating to the social, economic and physical well-being of people who live and work in urban areas large and small, in Canada and…

News | August 24, 2018

Certified healthy buildings? Bellevue and UW are working on it

Considering that most people spend one-third of their day at work, UW Civil and Environmental Engineering researchers are advocating for healthier buildings. And they aren’t wasting any time. The first government building in Puget Sound, Bellevue City Hall, recently gained Fitwel Certification thanks to their help. “Since the built environment affects human health, the certification symbolizes the city’s commitment…

Scholar

Charles W Roeder

Scholar

Chiwei Yan

Scholar

Christine Bae

Center & Lab

Circular City + Living Systems Lab (CCLS)

The Circular City + Living Systems Lab (CCLS) is an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students researching living systems integrated into the built environment that produce and circulate resources within the food-water-energy nexus. Synthesizing expertise from architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, planning, biology, and ecology, the CCLS applies principles of research and design to investigate transformative…

News | August 25, 2023

Cities Aren’t Supposed to Burn Like This Anymore—Especially Lahaina

Rescue crews are still searching Lahaina, Hawaii, for survivors of the catastrophic wildfire that obliterated the town last week on the island of Maui. It’s the deadliest blaze in modern American history, with 99 people confirmed dead, surpassing the 85 that perished in 2018’s Camp Fire in Paradise, California. Crews have only searched a quarter…

News | January 5, 2018

Cities face a surge in online deliveries

By the time veteran UPS driver Thomas “Tommy” Chu leaves work, he will have picked up and delivered hundreds of packages in New York City, making some 16 stops an hour as his company hurries to meet the online shopping rush. But what may be his most impressive feat of the day precedes that scramble:…

News | June 9, 2020

Cities have changed – for rats

After Chicago’s stores and restaurants shut down in March, Rebecca Fyffe, the director of research at a pest-control company, went on one of her usual evening “rat safaris.” Her employer, Landmark Pest Management, services many of the city’s high-end, Michelin-rated restaurants, which had been forced to close hastily, dumping piles of produce. Beside a dumpster…

News | April 27, 2017

Cities Seek Deliverance From the E-Commerce Boom

With a major increase in residential deliveries, new urban delivery challenges have also arrived. That’s due in part to the failures of urban planning and the nature of the trucking business. While matters of public policy like public transit, bike lanes, and walkability fall within the purview of planning boards and municipal departments of transportation,…

Research Beyond UW | York University

City Institute at York University (CITY)

The City Institute at York University (CITY) brings together over 60 of the university’s urban scholars and scores of graduate students from fields as diverse as planning, geography, environmental studies, anthropology, sociology, political science, education, law, transportation and the humanities. This interdisciplinary institute facilitates critical and collaborative research, providing new knowledge and innovative approaches to…

News | March 23, 2018

City of Bellevue selected as 2018-2019 UW Livable City Year partner

The University of Washington Livable City Year program has selected the City of Bellevue to be the community partner for the 2018-2019 academic year. The year-long partnership connects city staff with students and faculty who will collaborate on projects to advance the Bellevue City Council Vision Priorities, specifically around livability and sustainability. In the upcoming…

News | March 23, 2020

City of Seattle Adapting Streets to Support Small Businesses During Coronavirus Shut Down

Mayor Jenny A. Durkan announced today that starting this afternoon the Seattle Department of Transportation is converting on-street parking spaces near restaurants to temporary loading zones to facilitate curbside meal pickup.The first locations to receive temporary loading zones are areas with high concentrations of restaurants on blocks that do not otherwise have enough loading options….

Degree Program

Civil and Environmental Engineering (PhD)

Students in the UW CEE Ph.D. program work closely with distinguished faculty on research and pursue their own innovative projects, preparing them to make a difference in the world. Students who pursue Ph.D. degrees often obtain high-level jobs in industry or go on to work in academia. Students focus their studies on one of the…

Degree Program

Civil Engineering (BS, MS)

At the University of Washington, civil engineering students are preparing to take on the challenges presented by aging national infrastructure and the pressing needs of both urban and developing communities around the globe. Civil engineers design, build, operate and maintain urban environments to improve people’s lives. From transportation to water quality to earthquake preparedness, resilient…

Center & Lab

Clean Energy Institute

CEI’s mission is to accelerate the adoption of a scalable clean energy future that will improve the health and economy of our state, nation, and world. To accomplish this mission, CEI supports the advancement of next-generation solar energy and battery materials and devices, as well as their integration with systems and the grid. The institute…

News | October 24, 2019

Climate change could make borrowing costlier for states and cities

Someday soon, analysts will determine that a city or county, or maybe a school district or utility, is so vulnerable to sea level rise, flooding, drought or wildfire that it is an investment risk. As ratings firms begin to focus on climate change, and investors increasingly talk about the issue, those involved in the market…

News | November 20, 2019

Climate Migration and Global Cities

Between 2009 and 2018, 71 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced. This includes 41 million people who have been displaced within their own country, including the majority of climate migrants (World Bank Group, 2018 [PDF]); 26 million refugees, those forced to flee because of violence or persecution; and 4 million asylum-seekers, those who are waiting for…

Research Beyond UW | Lousiana State University

Coastal Sustainability Studio

The LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio brings together academic disciplines that typically conduct research separately—such as designers, scientists, planners, and engineers—to intensively study and respond to critical issues of coastal settlement, restoration, flood protection, and economic development. Through its integrated design and systems thinking approach, programs, and projects, the CSS builds university capacity and transdisciplinary teams…

News | September 8, 2017

College of Built Environments’ David de la Cruz partners with communities for environmental justice

David de la Cruz has a question about power. “When we think about toxic sites and where they’re placed in relation to where people live, who’s left out of making those decisions?” “Often,” he answers, “it’s the people who live there. It’s low-income communities, working-class communities and communities of color who don’t have a say….

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…

News | March 17, 2022

Commuter study indicates pandemic patterns likely won’t change quickly in the Seattle metro area

In many ways, it feels like pre-pandemic commutes are back. Though the peaks have pretty much returned to normal, the commutes don’t last as long in the Seattle metro area. But between commutes? There’s actually more traffic. Those were some of the findings in an ongoing study of commute patterns. It’s a study that began…

Degree Program

Construction Management (BS, Arch dual degree, Minor, MS, Cert, PCE)

The department’s mission is: To prepare individuals for careers in the construction and related industries by providing high quality education, to conduct research that will benefit the construction industry, and to provide service to the community. This includes educating students in developing a sustainable built environment and applying innovative construction techniques based on cutting edge…

News | December 7, 2020

Coronavirus cases spike among Puget Sound-area transit workers

As a new wave of coronavirus sweeps Washington state, positive cases are ticking up at local transit agencies, where workers have continued driving and servicing buses since the start of the pandemic. At King County Metro, employees have reported 20 positive tests from the start of this month to Nov. 21. That’s up from six in October…

News | June 26, 2015

CoSSar presented by Scott Miles

​Presented at June 1st Urban@UW Launch Meeting

News | October 25, 2018

Could parcel lockers in transit stations reduce traffic congestion in Seattle?

UW researchers want to know if parcel lockers that aren’t owned by a specific company could alleviate traffic congestion in Seattle.Matt Hagen Seattle is one of the most congested cities in America. Delivery trucks take up space on already crowded roads and idle in parking spots and loading bays. And if no one is available…

News | November 26, 2024

Creating multi-sector teams to build cities where everyone thrives.

Research-to-Action Teams 2024-25 In April of 2024 two teams were selected for participation in the second cohort of the Research to Action Collaboratory. For 18 months Urban@UW will work with these teams to provide seed funds, dedicated time to building team cohesion and collaboration skills, and opportunities for peer support, shared resources, and learning. These…

News | May 2, 2018

CSDE Affiliates Examine Equity Issues Associated with Tolled Roads

Last week, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan proposed instituting a toll on downtown roads to curb congestion. The Seattle Times examined the potential benefits and implications of the toll. In unpacking the possible equity issues, the Times turned to a 2009 study conducted by Affiliate Jennifer Romich, Associate Professor at the School of Social Work; Affiliate Robert Plotnick, Professor Emeritus at the Evans School of…

Scholar

Cynthia Chen

News | July 7, 2016

Data Science for Social Good 2016

This summer we are thrilled to be supporting the eScience Institute’s Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) program. Modeled after similar programs at the University of Chicago and Georgia Tech, with elements from eScience’s own Data Science Incubator, sixteen DSSG Student Fellows have been working with academic researchers, data scientists, and public stakeholder groups on…

News | September 23, 2019

Data Science for Social Good team analyzes equity of congestion pricing on Interstate 405

A team in the eScience Institute’s Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) program has partnered with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to study the usage patterns, price sensitivities and equity impacts of congestion pricing on Interstate 405. The project utilizes data on the more than 16 million trips taken in the high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes of I-405…

Center & Lab

DataLab

The DataLab is the nexus for research on Data Science and Analytics at the UW iSchool. We study large-scale, heterogeneous human data in an effort to understand why individuals, consumers, and societies behave the way they do. Our goal is to use data for the social good, in an ethical manner that can inform policy…

Scholar

Dawn Lehman

News | December 17, 2019

Delivering the goods: Drones and robots are making their way to your door

The reality today is that delivery is a bigger business than ever. With online shopping, it’s estimated the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx and UPS will process, sort and deliver more than two billion packages between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. Amazon’s own fleet of delivery trucks is expected to handle 275 million holiday season shipments. And Amazon…

News | May 14, 2019

Delivery bots could make cities more accessible for everyone

Last week, Washington’s governor Jay Inslee signed a bill allowing robots to roll through the state, delivering goods and food orders. Washington joins seven other states that have legalized bot deliveries, and other cities and college campuses have allowed companies to pilot their services. Perhaps new tech could be what spurs more accessible city design, creating more navigable public spaces…

News | March 30, 2023

DEOHS Researchers Testing Air Quality on Buses and Trains

University of Washington researchers are working with Pacific Northwest transit agencies to study whether illicit drug use on buses and trains may affect air quality in the vehicles. The research team is collecting samples and assessing airflow on buses and trains this spring in a first-of-its-kind study to address concerns about increased use of fentanyl…

Funding

Department of Transportation – Accelerated Innovation Deployment

The AID Demonstration program provides funding as an incentive for eligible entities to accelerate the implementation and adoption of innovation in highway transportation. The AID Demonstration program is one initiative under the multi-faceted Technology and Innovation Deployment Program (TIDP) approach providing funding and other resources to offset the risk of trying an innovation.

News | May 31, 2019

Designing for resilience

Seattle is one of the fastest growing cities in the country– a hub of innovation with a thriving economy. Yet this rapid growth challenges the capacity of the city to adapt without damaging its current communities. Students from The University of Washington’s College of Built Environments responded to these and other challenges through the Winter…

News | June 26, 2015

Designing Healthy Cities by Andrew Dannenberg

Presented at the June 1st Urban@UW Launch

News | October 27, 2017

Developing ‘breakaway’ tsunami resistant buildings

The best designs can also be the most surprising. A promising new concept for tsunami resistant buildings features breakaway walls and floors on lower levels that, when removed by forceful waves, strengthen the structure and better protect occupants seeking safety on higher floors. Thanks to a $1 million National Science Foundation Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing…

News | December 24, 2020

Did COVID lockdowns really clear the air?

The early days of the Covid-19 lockdowns were seen as an environmental marvel. With fewer commuters and empty highways, residents of cities from Los Angeles to New Delhi witnessed clear blue skies and mountain views that had long been obscured by smog. The dramatic atmospheric transformation was one of first of the “silver linings” that the coronavirus…

Map | Nairobi

Digital Matatus, Nairobi

Digital Matatus shows how to leverage the ubiquitous nature of cellphone technology in developing countries to collect data for essential infrastructure, give it out freely and in the process spur innovation and improved services for citizens. Conceived out of collaboration between Kenyan and American universities and the technology sector in Nairobi, this project captured transit…

Degree Program

Disability Studies (Minor, Major, and Graduate Certificate)

Disability Studies is a multi-disciplinary field that investigates, critiques, and enhances Western society’s understandings of disability. The Disability Studies Program's Minor, Major, and Graduate Certificate will introduce you to a critical framework for recognizing how people with disabilities have experienced disadvantages and exclusion because of personal and societal responses to impairment, and for exploring how…

News | February 23, 2018

Do you have questions about transportation in Seattle? Here are a few answers

Since The Seattle Times Traffic Lab launched a year ago, they’ve heard from scores of readers about getting around Here are a few: Q: Do Uber and Lyft worsen Seattle’s traffic congestion? A: A study in New York City said the growth of the app-based ride services could work against cities’ goals of unclogging streets…

News | July 13, 2017

Does commercial zoning increase neighborhood crime?

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump told The New York Times that America’s urban centers are some of the “most dangerous,” crime-filled places in the world. Even though experts were quick to point out that violent crime has actually declined in all but a handful of America’s largest cities and urban…

News | November 7, 2019

Does Seattle’s dockless system offer a glimpse of the future of bike-sharing?

In downtown Seattle, if you’re trying to find the nearest shared e-bike, you could check an app. But, typically, all you really need to do is look down the sidewalk six feet in front of you. They’re on every street, standing next to light posts, up against railings on bridges and occasionally in the middle…

Scholar

Don Mackenzie

News | May 4, 2023

Don’t Take Concrete for Granite

Concrete: it’s all around us. It makes up sidewalks, buildings, pavements, bridges, and dams, and can be shaped (within reason) to a builder’s whims. The ubiquitous material probably escapes everyday notice simply because it is everywhere. So, is concrete really a big deal? “I have a presentation that starts out asking that question,” says Fred…

Scholar

Dorothy Reed

Map | New York

Dredge Collective: Mapping New York Harbor

JFK airport and thousands of acres encircling Jamaica Bay were marshy wetlands before being filled in. The extant vegetated marsh islands within it are eroding at an ever-accelerating rate. Without additional anthropogenic influences – such as the creative application of dredged materials to reconstruct the islands – they may completely disappear as soon as 2020.…

News | June 8, 2017

Drone vs. truck deliveries: Which creates less carbon pollution?

Delivering packages with drones can reduce carbon dioxide emissions in certain circumstances as compared to truck deliveries, a new study from University of Washington transportation engineers finds. In a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of Transportation Research Part D, researchers found that drones tend to have carbon dioxide emissions advantages over trucks…

News | April 17, 2024

E-bike fires are sparking trouble in Seattle. Here’s how to use them safely.

Written by Gustavo Sagrero Álvarez for KUOW. Seattle’s streets have become home to hundreds of electronic bikes and scooters in recent years, with a growing number of commuters and hobbyists relying on them to get around. As usage of these lithium-ion battery powered devices grows, so has the number of fires in connection with them….

News | May 20, 2020

EarthLab announces Innovation Grant recipients for 2020

Research projects funded for 2020 by EarthLab’s Innovation Grants Program will study how vegetation might reduce pollution, help an Alaskan village achieve safety and resilience amid climate change, organize a California river’s restoration with tribal involvement, compare practices in self-managed indigenous immigrant communities and more. EarthLab is a University of Washington-wide institute connecting scholars with community…

News | April 8, 2024

Earthquake showed Taiwan was well prepared for a big one — more so than parts of U.S.

Originally reported by Evan Bush  for NBC News. The powerful earthquake in Taiwan on Wednesday shook an island that was well prepared for a seismic catastrophe — likely more so than some regions of the U.S., several experts said. Nine people have been reported dead, though Taiwanese officials said the death toll could rise in…

News | October 10, 2017

Earthquakes are inevitable but catastrophe is not

Written by University of Washington Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Marc Eberherd, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering associate professor Jeffery Berman, and Department of Human-Centered Design senior scientist Scott Miles. Many older buildings provide vital, low-cost housing. But we must find a way to make these structures safer. It should not be…

Scholar

Edward McCormack

Scholar

Elizabeth Umbanhowar

Scholar

Emily Keller

News | May 23, 2019

Employees are pressuring Amazon to become a leader on climate. Here’s how that could work.

Amazon is preparing to do something it’s never done before: disclose its companywide greenhouse gas emissions. Amazon, with its diverse portfolio of energy-hungry businesses, faces a challenge in calculating and reducing emissions. Some recent moves, such as its push toward ever-faster delivery speeds for its core Prime customers, raise questions about its ability to do…

Center & Lab

Energy & Sustainability in Construction (ESC) Lab

The ESC lab promotes energy efficiency and sustainability (EES) in the built environment through the development of sustainable design and construction practices and risk-based financial models for EES investments. We aim to integrate advanced financial analysis, project development, and management strategies used during the delivery of energy-efficient buildings and sustainable infrastructures. With this work, ESC…

News | February 4, 2022

Entombed in the Landscape: Waste with Assistant Professor Catherine De Almeida

Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture Catherine De Almeida remembers picking up trash on the playground, seeing people throw trash out their car window, and noticing trash flying around while she played outside as a child. The presence of litter in landscapes upset her so much that she would spend her elementary school recesses picking up…

Degree Program

Environmental Engineering (BS)

Environmental engineers work to both safeguard and improve the quality of the environment. By utilizing a combination of both scientific and engineering principles, environmental engineers work to protect the world and its people from negative environmental impacts caused by both natural and human activities. The work of environmental engineers is increasingly important, as healthy environments…

News | June 17, 2015

eScience Institute’s Data Science for Social Good Projects Announced

eScience Institute’s Data Science for Social Good Projects Announced Bringing together data scientists to work on focused, collaborative projects designed to impact public policy. This Summer teams will be looking at: Assessing Community Well-Being Through Open Data and Social Media – providing neighborhood communities with a better understanding of the factors that impact their well-being….

News | February 11, 2020

Everyday Commuting in Seattle

There are many different ways for Liz MacGahan to get to work.  Most mornings, she walks.“I feel like a farmer walking the fields, looking for what has changed … and what is different,” she said. The walk energizes here for work and takes around 40 minuets. On another morning, the weather was bad, so she…

News | April 11, 2018

Everyone wants to know how Seattle’s dockless bike share experiment is going

City planners and researchers are eager to get feedback on Seattle’s novel dockless bike sharing pilot to determine whether it is a viable mobility solution or an oversaturated fad. The Seattle Department of Transportation launched a survey (first spotted by Curbed) to find out how riders feel about the three bike share services that arrived in their city…

News | February 27, 2019

Evictions, rent spikes contribute to Washington’s homelessness crisis, study finds

With rent spikes and the decline of affordable housing, a team of University of Washington researchers are finding that evictions are contributing to the rise in homelessness across Washington state. Tim Thomas is the Principal Investigator of the study, and post-doctoral fellow at the UW eScience Institute. Now they’ve created a “living document” that shows eviction rates…

News | August 11, 2022

Expansion of electric vehicle grid hits roadblocks in rural WA

In just the past few years, the number of electric vehicles registered in the state more than tripled as new EV options became available, according to state licensing data. This year so far, one out of every 10 vehicles sold is an EV. Today about 100,000 EVs roam Washington highways and streets, though they still…

Scholar

Faisal Hossain

News | July 2, 2020

Fearful commuters on trains, buses hold one key to U.S. recovery

Masks are mandatory on subways and buses in Washington. San Francisco is betting longer trains will help riders social distance. Crews disinfect New York’s trains daily — stations twice a day — and are testing ultraviolet light devices to see if they kill Covid-19 on surfaces. As states gradually reopen, transit agencies are taking steps…

News | March 16, 2017

First UW Livable City Year project reports delivered to the City of Auburn

Teams of University of Washington students have been working throughout this academic year on livability and sustainability projects in the City of Auburn. The yearlong Livable City Year partnership has given students a chance to work on real-world challenges identified by Auburn, while providing Auburn with tens of thousands of hours of study and student…

Scholar

Giovanni Migliaccio

News | March 20, 2018

Giving Voice, Being Seen: Community Agency and Design Action in a Time of Climate Change, April 26

Climate change affects everyone, but it does not impact all communities equally. These differences may be most evident in the built environment and the shared spaces such as parks, streets, schools, homes, which we experience and move through daily. In seeking to inspire more collaborative, inclusive and creative responses to climate change in the built…

Research Beyond UW | Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University

Global Cities Research Institute

The Global Cities Research Institute was inaugurated in 2006 to bring together key researchers at RMIT University, Australia, working on understanding the complexity of globalizing urban settings from provincial centres to mega-cities. Our research is highly collaborative, linking with institutions and people around the world in long-term partnerships, we are directly addressing the challenge through…

News | October 22, 2019

Global climate action motivates King County Council push for zero-emissions public transit by 2035

Back when King County first began to test electric buses in 2016, officials hoped to build a “zero-emission fleet” by 2040. But recent activism calling for aggressive measures to cut carbon emissions — especially from Indigenous demonstrators and students — has helped push forward proposed legislation that aims to accelerate that transition to 2035. Cities that truly aim for zero-emissions status…

News | May 20, 2024

Global life expectancy is projected to increase by 5 years by 2050

Reported by Rodielon Putol for Earth A recent study from the prestigious Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) 2021 reveals an encouraging trend: global life expectancy is expected to rise by nearly five years by 2050, despite various global challenges. According to the findings published in The Lancet, life expectancy for males is projected to…

News | February 14, 2023

Google’s exit from big Seattle-area project shows fleeting relationship between tech and communities

The City of Kirkland was counting on Google to be the “catalyst project” in its proposed Station Area Plan, a reimagining of the area around a planned rapid transit bus station into a higher density community of housing and businesses. But suddenly and without warning, the plans evaporated last month. The City of Kirkland issued…

Funding

Graham Foundation

Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts makes project-based grants to individuals and organizations and produces public programs to foster the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. Architecture and related spatial practices engage a wide range…

Center & Lab

Green Cities: Good Health

Metro nature - including trees, parks, gardens, and natural areas - enhance quality of life in cities and towns. The experience of nature improves human health and well-being in many ways. Nearly 40 years of scientific studies tell us how. Here's the research ...

Center & Lab

Green Futures Lab

The Green Futures Lab mission is to support interdisciplinary research and design that advances our understanding of, visions for, and design of a vital and ecologically sustainable public realm. Apply Green Futures research and designs to policy develop potential urban green infrastructure solutions within Seattle and the Pacific Northwest region and work with the University…

Scholar

Greg Miller

Scholar

Gregg Colburn

News | April 26, 2021

Gridlock is coming back. Noise doesn’t have to.

What does a city sound like? Asked that question, do you think of the dull roar of traffic, the staccato yelp of a horn, the wobbling screech of an alarm? In other words, do you think of cars? Automobiles are such a fixture of the urban landscape that it’s easy to overlook just how much…

News | February 3, 2023

Group’s lawsuit seeks to void Washington transportation law

A conservative legal advocacy organization is suing to halt the nearly $17 billion transportation funding bill passed by the Washington Legislature and signed by Gov. Jay Inslee last year. Senate Bill 5974, known as Move Ahead Washington, passed last session despite opposition from most Republicans. The legislation pays for finishing massive highway projects and pays…

News | April 9, 2017

Growing Up in the University District

Vikram Jandhyala sees Seattle’s University District evolving into an “innovation district” — a place where public and private sectors work together to develop socially beneficial technologies. Think Silicon Valley, where Stanford University faculty and students launch new companies or work on their new technologies with existing tech giants. As the University of Washington’s vice president…

Scholar

Gundula Proksch

News | April 22, 2024

Has the US finally figured out how to do high-speed rail?

Written by Jeremy Hsu for NewScientist. Construction began today on the first true high-speed rail line in the US, which will connect Los Angeles suburbanites to the bright lights of Las Vegas, Nevada. Not only should the project enable people in the US to finally experience European and Asian standards of speedy passenger trains, it…

Scholar

Heather Burpee

News | June 17, 2024

Here’s what homeowners can do to prevent one of the leading causes of death for birds

Originally reported by for King 5 by Erica Zucco. SEATTLE — U.S. Fish and Wildlife and other agencies say one of the leading causes of death in birds is colliding with buildings. Birds fly at a high rate of speed and don’t recognize glass as a barrier, often ending in mortality. University of Washington researcher…

News | June 11, 2024

Here’s why an Arizona medical examiner is working to track heat-related deaths

Written by Alejandra Borunda for NPR News Greg Hess deals with death day in, day out. Hess is the medical examiner for Pima County, Ariz., a region along the United States-Mexico border. His office handles some 3,000 deaths each year — quiet deaths, overdoses, gruesome deaths, tragic ones. From April through October every year, Hess…

News | May 17, 2015

High speed battery charging for smart grids.

SCL (Michael Pesin) and UW Electrical Engineering (Daniel Kirtchner). Develop new energy storage technologies that facilitate variable energy output, which more closely mirrors how electricity is used in modern grid scenarios.

News | February 7, 2019

Homeowners keep building walls around Puget Sound. Biologists are taking out more

Puget Sound has started getting healthier, at least by one measure: A little less of its shoreline is buried under walls of concrete and rock. Biologists have long pointed to seawalls, bulkheads and other protective structures known as “shoreline armoring” as a major environmental problem for Puget Sound. More than 660 miles, or about 29…

News | October 15, 2019

How bike sharing in Seattle rose from the ashes of Pronto’s failure

In October 2014, Seattle launched Pronto, a docked bike-share program. But Pronto had problems shifting into a higher gear, and the city ended the program in 2017, making Seattle one of the few cities in the world to shut down a modern public bike sharing system. Then, four months later, Seattle became the first city…

News | March 25, 2024

How e-bikes are helping ease package delivery clogs

Originally reported by Kristin Schwab for Marketplace. It’s a rainy evening in New York City, as in flash flood warning kind of rain. But it’s nothing Michael Singh hasn’t seen. “Yes, rain, snow, high winds, all of it,” said Singh, who’s been a bike messenger for seven years and started with Amazon a few months ago….

News | March 14, 2017

How future superstorms could overwhelm today’s wastewater infrastructure

The current Seattle rainstorm, and many like it this year, are overwhelming our city’s wastewater pipes, and some sewage may be dumping into the Puget Sound as we speak. But even in a normal year, King County dumps about 800 million gallons of raw sewage into its waterways. That’s because, when it rains too much…

News | August 30, 2018

How racism kept black Tacomans from buying houses for decades

Honorably discharged after serving in the Korean War, the young man looked to settle down in Tacoma with his wife. If only they could convince someone to show them a home. If they got to a house first, the real estate agent would leave upon seeing them. They learned to park down the street and…

News | May 23, 2018

How Seattle’s appetite for construction is creating a growing waste problem

The sun has barely burned the fog off Lake Washington as Noel Stout, standing near the water’s edge, peers at a heavy wooden trellis suspended 20 feet above a concrete backyard patio. He’s rigged a system of ropes and pulleys to the cedar latticework, which just yesterday supported a deck with a sweeping view across…

News | March 15, 2018

How social networks help perpetuate the ‘cycle of segregation’

Think about the last time you looked for a new apartment or house. Maybe you asked your friends or colleagues about where they lived. You thought about your route to work, or that neighborhood you always drive through on your way to your kid’s soccer practice. Many of these places were familiar to you, whether…

News | August 29, 2019

How tech keeps Seattle’s transit system running — and why more innovation could be coming

Amid a sea of green rectangles on a computer monitor, one had turned red. A RapidRide bus — the red rectangle — was traveling a bit too rapidly. It was almost 11 a.m. on Friday, August 23 in the King County Metro Transit Control Center (TCC). Coordinators sat in front of large monitors, tracking the…

News | April 10, 2018

How Texas is ‘building back better’ from Hurricane Harvey

For most Americans, the one-two punch of last fall’s hurricanes is ancient history. But hard-hit communities in Texas, Florida and the Caribbean are still rebuilding. Nicole Errett, lecturer in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, recently traveled with public health students from the University of Washington to southeast Texas, where the impacts of…

Map | Berlin

How the S-Bahn Ring Divides Berlin

​Map explores where new and native Berliners settle relative to the S-Bahn ring

News | October 22, 2019

How the Urban Freight Lab seeks to fix the last 50 feet of shipping

The very last step of shipping packages in a city ⁠— not the end mile but the “final 50 feet” ⁠— bedevils delivery drivers. Every day, they face the task of driving and parking safely and legally in urban environments not built for the brick-and-asphalt end journeys of e-commerce. For these workers every hour is rush hour,…

News | July 6, 2020

How urban design can make or break protests

If protesters could plan a perfect stage to voice their grievances, it might look a lot like Athens, Greece. Its broad, yet not overly long, central boulevards are almost tailor-made for parading. Its large parliament-facing square, Syntagma, forms a natural focal point for marchers. With a warren of narrow streets surrounding the center, including the…

News | November 5, 2019

How Washington’s toll lanes help low income communities

A recent study sought to discover how toll lanes like the ones implemented on Washington’s 405 freeway affect low-income communities. And while those communities are the ones who most often can’t afford the toll lanes, one expert argues that they benefit everyone. “(Drivers) are voluntarily choosing to subsidize the operation and the construction and the maintenance of…

News | November 3, 2022

How West Coast universities, colleges grapple with ‘literal overheating’ of buildings amid recent heat wave

The historic heat wave that sweltered the West in early September, breaking records and straining California’s power grid, forced colleges and universities across the region to further assess extreme heat events. College campuses, specifically students and faculty on the West Coast, struggled with the intense heat wave. They have warned their communities of the excessive heat but…

News | January 17, 2019

How your online shopping snarls traffic on city streets

This past holiday season, to the delight of retailers, saw shopping records broken left and right. Amazon set a sales record over the long Thanksgiving weekend. Cyber Monday hit a record $7.9 billion in sales. Online holiday shopping, at a predicted $126 billion, would mark an all-time record. That also means a record number of online deliveries. The strong retail economy…

Funding

Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment (HDBE)

The Humans, Disasters and the Built Environment (HDBE) program supports fundamental, multidisciplinary research on the interactions between humans and the built environment within and among communities exposed to natural, technological and other types of hazards and disasters. The program's context is provided by ongoing and emerging changes in three interwoven elements of a community: its…

News | November 15, 2018

Hydropower to become unsustainable as climate changes

Large hydropower dams will become a less sustainable source of renewable energy as the climate changes, especially in the developing world, according to a report released Nov. 5. Unpredictable weather extremes, especially severe climate-driven droughts, are likely to reduce the dams’ ability to generate electricity, concluded the Michigan State University study. To avoid unreliable power generation,…

Scholar

Hyun Woo “Chris” Lee

Funding

IBM Center for the Business of Government – Connecting Research to Practice

The aim of the IBM Center for The Business of Government is to tap into the best minds in academe and the nonprofit sector who can use rigorous public management research and analytic techniques to help public sector executives and managers improve the effectiveness of government. We are looking for very practical findings and actionable…

News | June 19, 2018

If you want to get to know Seattle, walk through it

Walking is ordinary. It is so ordinary, most of us do it without thinking: You put one foot in front of the other to get to the bus, to walk from your car to the office, to pick up something from the store. It requires only shoes — and, because we live in Seattle, some…

News | May 8, 2018

In a concrete jungle, one architect pushes for plywood for giants

Timber is coming back in the Northwest. I don’t mean old growth forests. Those have been holding steady for a couple of decades.I mean architecture. Cross-laminated timber, or CLT, is a material a true modernist can love — and not just for furniture and finishes. It’s very strong, and too beautiful to hide inside walls….

News | September 9, 2021

In the early 1990s, heat waves battered Philadelphia’s most vulnerable communities. The lessons learned are helping today

The water trickled down quickly, enough to coat the sun-bleached concrete basin in a city park with a layer of wetness. A toddler danced, smiling as water from the park’s sprinklers rained down on her, keeping her cool. It was a blistering midsummer day in July, the kind that as recently as 30 years ago…

News | January 27, 2022

Incorporating Ride-Sourcing Service into ADA Paratransit

In early December 2021, PacTrans PI and Professor of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington, Qing Shen, and a Graduate Research Assistant in the Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Urban Design and Planning at the Uni246 versity of Washington, Lamis Ashour, delivered a webinar titled, Incorporating Ride-Sourcing Service into ADA Paratransit: Opportunities and Challenges…

News | August 4, 2023

Increasing Power Outages Don’t Hit Everyone Equally

Multiple rounds of storms tore through parts of Illinois and Missouri in the first week of July, triggering widespread power outages that left tens of thousands of people without electricity—some for days after the storms had passed. It was just one of many such events to hit people around the U.S. this year. Government data…

Map | New York

Inequality and New York’s Subway

This project from the New Yorker shows New York City has a problem with income inequality. And it’s getting worse—the top of the spectrum is gaining and the bottom is losing. Along individual subway lines, earnings range from poverty to considerable wealth. The interactive infographic here charts these shifts, using data on median household income,…

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…

News | November 30, 2021

Infrastructure matters for wildlife too – here’s how aging culverts are blocking Pacific salmon migration

Environmental and Forest Sciences Ph.D. Candidate Ashlee Abrantes, shares a perspective on how wildlife depend on urban infrastructure in this op-ed written for The Conversation.  — As the Biden administration prepares to make the biggest investment in U.S. infrastructure in more than a decade, there’s much discussion about how systems like roads, bridges and electric power grids…

Degree Program

Infrastructure Planning & Management

Well-planned infrastructure strengthens the sustainability and livability of our cities and communities. University of Washington's online Master of Infrastructure Planning & Management degree prepares you to lead the development of the next generation of critical infrastructure systems ­­— resilient, secure and accessible.

Degree Program

Interdisciplinary Urban Design & Planning (PhD)

This program brings together faculty from disciplines ranging from Architecture to Sociology to focus on the interdisciplinary study of urban problems and interventions. Covering scales from neighborhoods to metropolitan areas, the program addresses interrelationships between the physical environment, the built environment, and the social, economic, and political institutions and processes that shape urban areas. The…

News | May 31, 2019

Investing in Bothell’s future

Over the past decade, Bothell has seen a boom in population and economic growth — and the related impacts. The city’s downtown revitalization is one of the brightest spots of that boom. However, the state has been largely absent in its support for infrastructure spending to support the growth in our community. The state passed…

News | May 13, 2024

Is Seattle a walkable city? Pedestrian death rates show otherwise

Written by Jadenne Radoc Cabahug for Crosscut. Washington was the first state to commit to zero traffic fatalities. But 24 years later, deaths are at an all-time high and officials are reevaluating. Twenty-four years after Washington became the first state to commit to decreasing pedestrian traffic deaths to zero, the numbers continue to move in…

Scholar

Jan Whittington

Scholar

Jeff Berman

Scholar

Jessica Kaminsky

Scholar

Jessica Ray

Scholar

Joe Mienko

Scholar

Joe P. Mahoney

Scholar

John Schaufelberger

Scholar

John Stanton

News | November 26, 2024

Join Urban@UW in creating innovative solutions for city dwellers, today and into the future.

Support Urban@UW Urban@UW extends the understanding of cities—from people, buildings, infrastructure, and energy to economics, policy, culture, art, and nature—beyond individual topics to dynamically interdependent systems, so that we can holistically design and steward vibrant and welcoming cities in which future generations will thrive. Urban@UW works with scholars, policymakers, and community stakeholders to develop cross-disciplinary…

Scholar

Jon E. Froehlich

Scholar

Joseph Wartman

Scholar

Joshua Smith

Scholar

Julian Marshall

Scholar

Julian Yamaura

Scholar

Julie M. Johnson

News | May 5, 2021

Just Sustainabilities in a Post-Pandemic World: Virtual Symposium on May 27th

The COVID-19 pandemic has tested our cities’ adaptability and resilience and dug deeper holes in cities’ social, environmental and physical fabric. As we come out of the pandemic, we need to re-think how the city fabric functions. Planning for the post-pandemic city requires a careful understanding of the implications of the COVID19 pandemic on pre-existing…

Scholar

Kate Simonen

Scholar

Katie Wilson

News | May 14, 2015

Ken Smith: Going Beyond the Metrics

In case you missed it. Ken Smith’s lecture, a part of the UW Landscape Architecture Lecture Series on May 14th 2015. The lecture focuses on ideas and craft in creating contemporary landscapes particularly at a larger scale. A number of new or recent projects are discussed as case studies. It addresses issues of scale, infrastructure…

Scholar

Ken Yocom

Map

Killing the Colorado

The Colorado River — the most important water source for 40 million people in the West — is draining. For a century, seven states engineered ways to wring ever more water from the river, defying all natural limitations. But now, the very water laws and policies that shaped progress are rendering the West more vulnerable…

Map | Berlin

King County iMap

iMap is an application that allows you to view King County spatial information (GIS data and images) in an interactive map display. You can customize your map display to show just the information you want to see at the best scale for your chosen purpose. iMap is your window to a wealth of geographic information…

Map | Seattle

King County Metro System Map

Use this simple map viewer to see an overview of the Metro System Map. Pan and zoom for a closer look anywhere on the map, find your current location, search for an address of landmark, create bookmarks, and print your map view.

Scholar

Kyle Crowder

Map | Seattle

Lack of Sidewalks in Seattle

​This map from the Urbanist highlights the roughly 900 miles (28% of city blocks) without any sidewalks in Seattle.

Degree Program

Landscape Architecture (BLA, MLA, dual MArch-MLA, dual MLA-MUP)

At the University of Washington, we strive to create a program that meets the complex social, environmental, political, and aesthetic challenges of our time. Our program emphasis on urban ecological design addresses the multiple dimensions of today’s environmental challenges – infrastructure, culture, ecological literacy, and human and environmental health. With our focus on the intersection…

Research Beyond UW | Columbia University

Latin America and Caribbean Laboratory

The Latin American and Caribbean Laboratory (Latin Lab) serves as an intellectual platform for research, educational, and service initiatives related to architecture and urban planning in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The Lab aims to become a leading laboratory for the study of the built environment and community development in LAC and its diasporas…

Scholar

Leanne Do

News | May 28, 2020

Less traffic means 40% drop in car pollution in Seattle but will it last?

Experts say our good air quality this spring is partially due to people driving less. However, they warn that unless big, long-term changes are made, these cleaner skies are not here to stay. From late March through the end of April, car pollution in Seattle dropped by roughly 40 percent compared to the same time…

News | July 18, 2019

Lessons from California earthquakes: What Seattle should know about ‘basin effects’

Ridgecrest, California was hit with a magnitude 6.4 earthquake on the morning of July 4, followed by a magnitude 7.1 quake in the same area on July 5. Despite being 125 miles from the epicenter, people in Los Angeles felt long-lasting shaking. This is because of something called “basin effects” — and Seattle should take…

Scholar

Lillian J. Ratliff

Scholar

Linda Ng Boyle

News | October 2, 2018

Livable City Year and Tacoma finalize partnership

Throughout the 2017-2018 academic year, 349 University of Washington students and 26 UW faculty members worked with staff and community members from the City of Tacoma on projects to advance livability and sustainability in the city. The year-long partnership between Tacoma and UW Livable City Year (LCY) provided the city with university resources to tackle…

News | December 13, 2016

Livable City Year releases RFP, invites cities to partner for 2017-8 academic year

The University of Washington’s Livable City Year initiative is now accepting proposals from cities, counties, special districts and regional partnerships to partner with during the 2017-2018 academic year. UW Livable City Year (UW LCY) connects University of Washington faculty and students with a municipal partner for a full academic year to work on projects fostering…

News | August 17, 2021

Living Landscapes Incubator Request for Proposals

The Living Landscapes Incubator is a new grant program, developed as a collaboration among the College of Built Environments, the College of the Environment, Urban@UW, and the School of Public Health. Planning and designing for landscapes, environments, and infrastructure that support sustainable, livable, and equitable communities is a key challenge of our time. With generous funding from…

News | October 1, 2024

Loneliness in Washington tops national average

Reported by Christine Clarridge and Alex Fitzpatrick for Axios.  More than 43% of Washingtonians reported feeling lonely at least sometimes, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Why it matters: Loneliness isn’t just a feeling; it’s associated with serious mental and physical health impacts, including elevated likelihood of developing diabetes, cardiac risk,…

Funding

MacArthur Foundation

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and…

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 | December 13, 2019

Mapping jet pollution at Sea-Tac airport

Communities underneath and downwind of jets landing at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are exposed to a type of ultrafine particle pollution that is distinctly associated with aircraft, according to a new University of Washington study that is the first to identify the unique “signature” of aircraft emissions in Washington state. Researchers at the UW Department of Environmental &…

Scholar

Marc Eberhard

Scholar

Mark Hallenbeck

Scholar

Mark Haselkorn

Scholar

Mary Roderick

News | May 21, 2020

Measuring traffic performance during COVID-19

It’s not a surprise that traffic, like many things, has been impacted by COVID-19. But by how much? Researchers in UW CEE’s STAR Lab now have an answer to that question after employing a new scoring algorithm they developed to measure fluctuations in traffic. “We felt a strong need and thus started to develop an…

News | October 1, 2020

Meet the artists making comics in Seattle’s historic drawbridges

Seattle is home to more than a hundred bridges, four of which are historic bascule bridges spanning the Lake Washington Ship Canal — the massive earthmoving project that took from 1911 to 1917. Also known as drawbridges, the Montlake, University, Fremont and Ballard crossings are operated by bridgetenders who work in the towers and lift the double leaves…

Research Beyond UW | Virginia Tech

Metropolitan Institute

The Metropolitan Institute conducts basic and applied research on the dynamics of metropolitan complexities, such as demographics, environment, technology, design, transportation, and governance. With most of the globe’s population moving to urbanized areas, the major public policy challenges of this century will require a deeper understanding of how metropolitan complexities play out across multiple jurisdictions,…

News | September 16, 2017

Microsoft backs Seattle-Vancouver high-speed rail study as Cascadia conference aims to deepen ties

Pacific Northwest business and political leaders on both sides of the Canada-US border announced a series of agreements to strengthen relationships between Seattle, Portland, Vancouver B.C. and the surrounding areas. The new partnerships, made ahead of the second Cascadia Innovation Corridor conference in Seattle this week, focus on technology, economic development, education and transportation. Government…

News | August 1, 2016

Midsummer in Full Swing, A July Recap

While we are in the midst of a beautiful summer, things at the University of Washington and at Urban@UW are moving right along. We’ve seen some original writing, research, and even a podcast come out of community covering topics from marine noise pollution to data science and minimum wage to police reforms. The eScience Institute…

Scholar

Mike Motley

Center & Lab

Mobility Innovation Center

The University of Washington and Challenge Seattle — a private sector initiative of 17 of the Seattle region’s CEOs to address issues that will determine the region’s future — are committed to advancing our region’s economy and our quality of life by helping to build the transportation system of the future. Advancing our region’s goal…

News | January 31, 2016

Monthly Wrap up January 2016

It’s been a great start to 2016. UW Alumni association and History Department put together a woderful history lecture series: Excavating Seattle’s histories: Peoples, politics, and place check out details and videos here> The CBE also hosted a number of great speakers and events including SUSTAINING JAPAN: 3.11 FIVE YEARS ON lecture and panel discussion…

Degree Program

MS in Civil Engineering: Construction Engineering

Learn to combine the engineering principles and management techniques needed to lead major infrastructure efforts. Prepare for new challenges in the heavy construction industry with a program designed for professionals who have an undergraduate degree in engineering.

Degree Program

MS in Civil Engineering: Energy Infrastructure

The country’s existing energy systems are transforming at a rapid pace, driven by technological advances and factors such as the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. The new online Master of Science in Civil Engineering: Energy Infrastructure program, offered by the University of Washington, prepares you for the growing opportunities in this field. This engineering…

Map

Mukuru on the Move

This map identifies the various community health assets that the residents of the Mukuru informal settlement in Nairobi identified in a series of workshops from 2008-2010

Center & Lab

Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and Air Pollution (MESA Air)

MESA Air is designed to examine the relationship between air pollution exposures and the progression of cardiovascular disease over time. The United States Environmental Protection Agency funds the ten-year study, which involves thousands of participants, representing diverse areas of the United States. The MESA Air Pollution study is headquartered at the University of Washington, but…

Funding

National Science Foundation – Cyberinfrastructure Centers of Excellence

The Nation’s advanced research cyberinfrastructure (CI) ecosystem catalyzes discovery and innovation across all areas of science and engineering (S&E) research and education. The increasingly complex and rapidly evolving S&E landscape requires an agile, integrated, robust, trustworthy, and sustainable CI ecosystem that will drive new thinking and transformative discoveries in all areas of research and education.

Funding

National Science Foundation: Science and Technology Studies

The Science and Technology Studies (STS) program supports research that uses historical, philosophical, and social scientific methods to investigate the intellectual, material, and social facets of the scientific, technological, engineering and mathematical (STEM) disciplines. It encompasses a broad spectrum of topics including interdisciplinary studies of ethics, equity, governance, and policy issues that are closely related…

News | March 10, 2020

New Bill that May Pave the Way for Seattle Seismic Upgrades

Public officials for decades have promised to deal with the old brick buildings in Seattle that could crumble with deadly consequences when a major earthquake hits — and have produced nothing but paper plans. Now some advocates hope a new attempt could at last lead to action. A state bill that could help building owners finance…

News | August 15, 2016

New book ‘Cities that Think Like Planets’ imagines urban regions resilient to change

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…

News | January 11, 2018

New book ‘City Unsilenced’ explores protest and public space

Jeff Hou is a professor of landscape architecture and adjunct professor of urban design and planning in the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments. His research, teaching and practice focus on community design, design activism, cross-cultural learning and engaging marginalized communities in planning and design. Hou has written extensively on the agency of citizens…

News | November 20, 2020

New report by UDP PhD Candidate Katie Idziorek: Toward Universal Access

Urban Design & Planning PhD candidate Katie Idziorek is a co-author on a significant new report published this month: Toward Universal Access: A Case Study in the Los Angeles and Puget Sound Regions. Read an excerpt below:   Approximately 61 million U.S. adults—one quarter of the adult population—live with some form of disability. The Americans with Disabilities…

News | March 9, 2017

New report on driverless cars highlights potential challenges, solutions for Seattle’s roads

Over the next decade, driverless vehicles will make their way along Seattle roadways, possibly bringing relief to one of the most congested cities in the United States. Or, according to a new report out of the University of Washington, they could make things worse. UW’s Tech Policy Lab has partnered with Challenge Seattle to develop…

News | February 3, 2017

New route-finding map lets Seattle pedestrians avoid hills, construction, accessibility barriers

Transportation routing services primarily designed for people in cars don’t give pedestrians, parents pushing bulky strollers or people in wheelchairs much information about how to easily navigate a neighborhood using sidewalks. On Wednesday AccessMap – a University of Washington project spearheaded by the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology — launched a new online travel planner…

News | October 13, 2016

New Seattle freight lab tackles urban delivery congestion

SEATTLE (AP) — In this city where residents can get practically anything delivered to their doorsteps — often within hours — trucks, bikes, cars and buses regularly jostle for space on Seattle’s streets. The rise in e-commerce and on-demand delivery has put increasing pressure on fast-growing cities like Seattle to rethink how they manage traffic…

News | May 7, 2019

New study finds Seattle is even less prepared for mega quakes than previously thought

Scientists have found that the shaking likely to be generated by a massive earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone is worse than previously thought—and Seattle’s current building codes aren’t equipped to handle it. The study, which was presented at the 2019 Seismological Society of America Annual Meeting last month, is based on the work of…

News | July 14, 2016

New Tech Could Restore Some Quiet To Noisy Oceans

Forty feet below the surface of Puget Sound, a marbled murrelet dives for its catch. The water is cold, dark — and incredibly noisy. A ping-ping-ping emanates from the shore over second-long intervals and continues on for the next several hours, sending a series of pressure waves through the ocean. For the endangered bird, these…

News | April 20, 2023

New UW Center for Environmental Health Equity to Launch with a $12 Million Grant from the US EPA

The University of Washington will lead a new center to help address longstanding environmental and energy justice issues—from legacy pollution to energy security—in Pacific Northwest and Alaska Native communities with funding announced today by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The $12 million, five-year EPA cooperative agreement will create the new UW Center for Environmental…

News | January 5, 2017

New wood technology may offer hope for struggling timber

John Redfield watches with pride as his son moves a laser-guided precision saw the size of a semi-truck wheel into place over a massive panel of wood. Redfield’s fingers are scarred from a lifetime of cutting wood and now, after decades of decline in the logging business, he has new hope that his son, too,…

News | May 2, 2024

New York cities plagued by blackouts due to climate change, study finds

Written by Saul Elbein for The Hill. Climate change is pushing some New York City neighborhoods into dozens of nearly daylong blackouts per year, a new study has found. Large swaths of the state’s principal towns and cities faced repeated, protracted and dangerous weather-driven power outages between 2017 and 2020, according to findings published Wednesday in…

News | June 7, 2022

New, stronger rules for truck pollution still would not meet air quality goals

EPA’s proposal to limit toxic pollution from heavy-duty trucks is stronger than anything that has come before it. But state and local air quality agencies say it’s not aggressive enough to meet the federal regulator’s own clean air standards. The National Association of Clean Air Agencies — which represents 115 local air pollution control agencies…

News | February 12, 2016

New! Urban Map Gallery

We’ve created a new urban map gallery to explore how other people and organizations are studying and visualizing data. The gallery features seven cities facing different social, economic, and geographic issues. This curation is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather provide insight and inspiration. Maps included track everything from sound to subway…

Scholar

Nicole Errett

News | August 29, 2019

No minorities, no meat? Gig economy deepens cities’ divides

When an Indian customer of online food delivery service Zomato tweeted that he had canceled his order because it had been assigned to a non-Hindu worker, and his request for a Hindu denied, thousands weighed in. Last month’s incident was among a long series of allegations of discrimination related to religion, race, gender or sexual…

Map | Berlin

Noise Pollution Map of Berlin

This interactive map displays Berlin’s computed noise levels in decibels for day, evening and night times. Includes noise source information.

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 | January 3, 2023

Northwestern tribal transportation program center headquartered at UW

To support tribal communities in the Pacific Northwest with a variety of technical transportation needs, from administering public transit to enhancing safety and infrastructure, a new center will be headquartered in UW Civil & Environmental Engineering. Funded by a $3.7 million U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) grant awarded over the course of five years, the…

News | October 28, 2016

October Recap: Urban Transporation, Health, and Justice

October has seen a lot of research and engagement surrounding urban design, health, and transportation from University of Washington’s urban scholars and practitioners. Here at Urban@UW we’ve kicked off our Livable City Year program, reflected on our first full year of work and collaborations, and are planning for our symposium on Urban Environmental Justice in…

News | March 29, 2024

Office-to-residential conversion is a trendy idea for downtown resurgence — but has big challenges

Originally published in Geekwire Written by Chuck Wolfe, longtime affiliate associate professor in College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. Office-to-residential conversions are frequent fodder in discussions of the post-pandemic city, downtown regeneration, and hopes to contain rising housing costs. Remote work is here to stay, especially in hybrid form in the tech-centric…

News | May 14, 2021

Opinion: The lack of EV charging stations could limit EV growth

Originally written by Nives Dolšak, professor at the University of Washington School of Marine and Environmental Affairs and Aseem Prakash, professor at the University of Washington Department of Political Science.  Transportation contributes to about 28% of U.S. carbon emissions. To cut emissions by 50% by 2030, this sector will need to be rapidly decarbonized. Electric Vehicles (EVs) are…

Map

Opportunity Mapping

These maps provided by the Puget Sound Regional Council are a study of the region’s geography of opportunity, based on 2010 census data. “Opportunity” is a situation or condition that places individuals in a position to be more likely to succeed or excel. Opportunity maps illustrate where opportunity rich communities exist, assess who has access…

Research Beyond UW | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

P-REX

P-REX a research lab focused on environmental problems caused by urbanization, including the design, remediation, and reuse of waste landscapes worldwide. P-REX works to develop non-traditional design solutions to push the boundaries of conventional practice and incorporate resilient thinking into large-scale strategic planning & design.

News | April 3, 2020

Pacific Northwest may see temporary drop in emissions due to social distancing

A small silver lining of coronavirus social distancing measures is we are likely experiencing a temporary drop in emissions, experts say. NASA satellite images show significant drops in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in the air above China after lockdowns went into effect. Similar satellite imagery from the European Space Agency shows reductions in Italy, which is also keeping people…

News | January 7, 2020

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and UW creating app to make package delivery easier for drivers

The holidays may be over, but that means shipping and returns season has begun. Right now the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is developing a project that could potentially help us send and receive our packages sooner. The $1.5 million project is funded by the D.O.E’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Vehicle Technologies and…

Center & Lab

Pacific Northwest Seismic Network

To monitor earthquake and volcanic activity across the Pacific Northwest, the University of Washington and the University of Oregon cooperatively operate the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN). The PNSN is sponsored by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the U.S. Department of Energy, the State of Washington, and the State of Oregon. Beginning in 1969 with…

Center & Lab

Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans)

With dual themes of safety and sustainability, PacTrans serves as an engine and showcase for transportation research, education, and workforce development in the Pacific Northwest. PacTrans is a coalition of transportation professionals and educators from Oregon State University (OSU), the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF), University of Idaho (UI), University of Washington (UW), and Washington…

News | March 2, 2023

PacTrans Receives USDOT $15M Renewal Award

To continue and expand its important work to improve the movement of people and goods throughout the region, the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans) has received another green light: a $15 million renewal grant over the course of five years from the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT). “We are grateful for receiving this new grant to…

News | November 25, 2020

Pandemic streets showed the promise of car-free Seattle

One morning in early April, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic’s first wave, Gordon Padelford watched one man with a pickup truck leaving “local access only” signs and traffic cones along 25th Avenue South in the Central District. A longtime advocate of pedestrian and cycling street access, Padelford held his breath: Would the low-budget infrastructure really work?…

Scholar

Paolo Calvi

News | August 2, 2021

Paratransit services for people with disabilities in the Seattle region during the COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons for recovery planning

A new journal article titled, “Paratransit services for people with disabilities in the Seattle region during the COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons for recovery planning” co-written by Urban Design & Planning PhD students Lamis Abu Ashour, Xun Fang, and Yiyuan Wang; as well as Andrew Dannenberg, Affiliate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences and Urban Design…

News | October 31, 2018

Park facilities encourage longer bouts of physical activity

Researchers from the University of Washington School of Public Health watched 225 Seattle residents during their visits to public parks – through GPS devices, activity trackers and travel diaries – and found that they were active for longer at parks that had a greater variety of recreational facilities. The study, published online Sept. 19 in the Journal…

News | December 10, 2019

Park it, trucks: Here come New York’s cargo bikes

Delivery trucks and vans laden with online packages are putting a stranglehold on New York City streets and filling its air with pollutants. Now a new city program aims to replace some of these delivery vehicles with a transportation mode that is more environmentally friendly and does not commandeer street space: electric cargo bikes. It…

News | November 27, 2018

Parks help cities – but only if people use them

Written by Thaisa Way, faculty director of Urban@UW and Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture in the College of Built Environments. In cities, access to parks is strongly linked with better health for both people and neighborhoods. Children suffer higher rates of obesity when they grow up in urban areas without a park in easy reach. Because low-income neighborhoods have fewer green spaces, poorer…

News | June 27, 2017

Partnership with CMMB launches new center on smart, connected communities

China Multimedia Mobile Broadcasting – Vision (CMMB) has awarded the University of Washington Department of Electrical Engineering (UW EE) a $1.5 million gift to establish a new research center. The CMMB Vision-UW Center on Satellite Multimedia and Connected Vehicles will focus on the development of the next generation of smart cars and ubiquitous connectivity. “UW…

Map | New York

Patho Map NYC

PathoMap is a research project by Weill Cornell Medical College to study the microbiome and metagenome of the built environment of NYC.

Map

Pedestrian Crashes by Light Condition

We have mapped 5-years worth of pedestrian crashes in Melbourne, categorized by light condition. Other information including crash severity and speed limit are also included.

News | March 13, 2019

Pedestrian deaths are rising, but not in Seattle. Here’s why.

Across the U.S., pedestrian fatalities are increasing, according to a recent report. That’s often due to distracted drivers and pedestrians looking at their phones. Some are high or drunk, and increasingly, they’re driving heavy, taller SUVs that strike victims at chest height, where they can do more harm. But Seattle has bucked the trend, thanks…

News | February 8, 2022

Pedestrian deaths climb in Seattle, despite city’s pledge to eliminate them

Pedestrian fatalities can affect anybody, but Seattle’s Black, homeless, and senior communities are disproportionately impacted. Seattle’s pedestrian fatality rate was 150% higher in the five years after the launch of Vision Zero compared to the five years before, a KUOW analysis of SDOT data found. Yet — cars have been hitting pedestrians less often. That…

Scholar

Pedro Arduino

Research Beyond UW | University of Pennsylvania

Penn Institute for Urban Research

The Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR) is a university-wide, interdisciplinary institute at the University of Pennsylvania dedicated to urban research, education, and civic engagement. Affiliated with all 12 schools of the University of Pennsylvania and with the world of practice, Penn IUR fosters collaboration among scholars and policymakers across disciplines to address the…

News | August 20, 2024

Permeable pavement could help cities be more resilient to flooding

Reported by Stéphane Blais for La Presse Canadienne and the Toronto Sun. Pilot projects are being developed across Quebec to make parking lots, bike paths or portions of streets more resilient to climate change. To make cities more resilient to flooding caused by climate change, researchers are developing more permeable pavements to allow water to…

News | July 21, 2020

Pioneering study uses traffic cameras and AI to predict future, promising to save lives and money

In an effort to prevent deaths and injuries caused by crashes between vehicles, bikes and pedestrians, the city of Bellevue, Wash., set out more than five years ago to foresee the future. The idea was to use machine learning to analyze thousands of hours of video collected by 360-degree traffic cameras already installed citywide to…

News | July 28, 2023

Plans Develop for High-Speed Rail in the PNW

With a growing population in the Pacific Northwest, the call for better public transportation heightens. This March, Washington’s State Legislature signed off on a transportation milestone, allocating $150 million to a high-speed connection between Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Though this funding could reduce congestion, cut carbon emissions, and better connect these coastal cities, a…

News | February 1, 2023

Planting more trees in cities could slash summer heat deaths, study finds

Planting more trees in cities could cut the number of people dying from high temperatures in summer, according to a study published in the Lancet medical journal on Tuesday, a strategy that could help mitigate the effects of climate change as it continues to drive temperatures upwards. The research identifies a way for city planners…

News | July 24, 2015

PNNL Hosting 4th Workshop on Next-Generation Analytics for the Future Power Grid

News | May 23, 2023

Population Health Initiative Announces 12 Climate Change Planning Grant Awards

Earlier this month, the Population Health Initiative announced the award of a dozen planning grants to University of Washington researchers to support the launch of new climate-focused collaborations. Each of the $10,000 awards will support the funded teams to complete their planning projects during summer quarter 2023, which will be followed by a special autumn…

News | February 27, 2021

Post-pandemic cities: Fighting congestion in the e-commerce age

Congested city streets. Trucks fighting for curb space. Bottlenecks on beltways and bridge approaches as freight-laden semis rumble toward crowded urban centers. Pedestrians, cyclists, commuters, rideshare vehicles, and parcel-crammed vans—all contending with one another. This was the picture in many cities before the pandemic hit, fueled in part by the on-demand economy. An October 2019 New…

News | August 12, 2021

Project aims to better use of municipal open data, boost equity

In this month’s installment of the Innovation of the Month series, we highlight EquiTensors, a project that is reflecting on and raising awareness of applications, opportunities and potential misuses of data science and AI applied to mobility and transportation, specifically as it refers to race, equity and diversity. MetroLab’s Josh Schacht spoke with the leader of the…

News | April 25, 2019

Project Sidewalk helps users map accessibility around Seattle, other cities

About 3.6 million adults in the United States use a wheelchair to get around, according to census data. But unless you’re one of those people, you might not know how hard it is to get around your city. Now people can help map out accessibility here in Seattle. University of Washington researchers have led the development…

News | May 16, 2023

Prolonged Power Outages, Often Caused by Weather Events, Hit Some Parts of the U.S. Harder than Others

A study published April 29 in the journal Nature Communications analyzed three years of power outages across the U.S., finding that Americans already bearing the brunt of climate change and health inequities are clustered in four regions — Louisiana, Arkansas, central Alabama and northern Michigan — and that they are most at risk of impact…

News | March 15, 2019

PSU takes on regional sustainability with the Emerald Corridor Collaboratory

Last year,  the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland State University joined a regional pilot project called the Emerald Corridor Collaboratory that aims to do just that by joining four universities and four Pacific Northwest cities in a quest for better, more effective partnerships. Funded by a $100,000 grant from the Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation, the Emerald Corridor Collaboratory…

News | January 5, 2023

Public art in Seattle’s light rail stations has a deeper backstory than you’d think

The stainless-steel blob in an airport. The oversized, poured-concrete nothing in a plaza. The whimsically rendered, locally iconic animals — salmon for Seattle, pelicans for Pensacola — garnishing a park. It’s no secret: Most public art is depressingly perfunctory. Which is to say: If you care about getting it right, public art has to be…

News | September 21, 2022

Q&A: Exploring How the Design of the Built Environment Affects Our Health and Well-Being

How does the design of the built environment – such as houses, schools, workplaces, streets, parks, transportation systems, and urban form – affect our health and well-being? To explore these issues, editors Nisha D. Botchwey, Andrew Dannenberg, and Howard Frumkin, recently published the second edition of “Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Well-being, Equity,…

News | October 20, 2022

Q&A: UnlockedMaps provides real-time accessibility information for urban rail transit in six metro areas

While many people use Google Maps and other navigation tools to plan their rail transit trips across a city, these apps and websites often lack important information about how accessible a specific station is. That’s a problem for people who use the elevators, including those with mobility disabilities, pregnant people and commuters with heavy equipment…

Scholar

Qing Shen

News | March 21, 2023

Quieting a Bridge

Like many bridges around the world, the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (SR 520 bridge) has expansion joints that allow it to expand or contract to adapt to environmental changes, such as changes in water level, without causing structural damage. However, expansion joints can create noise problems. When the new SR 520 bridge opened in 2016,…

Scholar

Rachel Berney

News | February 24, 2021

Racial disparities prompt calls to repeal King County’s bicycle helmet law

In the fall of 2019, a white man spat on Edwin Lindo while he was riding his bicycle with a friend around Mercer Island. “It gets on my jersey and I’m like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening right now,’” he recalled. Lindo, who identifies as Central American Indigenous from Nicaragua and El Salvador, and his friend,…

News | April 6, 2016

Reading List for Edgar Pieterse Visit 4/12

In anticipation of Edgar Pieterse’s visit we thought you might enjoy a video lecture and in-depth examination to get a feel for Pieterse’s research and thinking. How can we transcend slum urbanism in Africa? – Edgar Pieterse, University of Cape Town – This short video delivered by Edgar Pieterse and UN-Habitat offers a very accessible…

Degree Program

Real Estate (BS, MS, Minor, Cert, PCE)

Our mission is: To be one the world’s leading academic centers in real estate, through the promotion of excellence in research and educational programs in an intellectually stimulating, creative and innovative environment and that engages with and empowers real estate leaders and the community to transform our built environment To achieve this we aim to:…

News | October 19, 2022

Recently completed Spark Grants foster research on mobile home wastewater management, and estimating unhoused populations

Over the past year, two teams of researchers from the University of Washington tackled a host of urban challenges in our region with the support of Urban@UW’s Spark Grants. In September 2021 grants of up to $20,000 were awarded to amplify collaborative research-to-practice with a focus on today’s urban issues. The two UW teams of…

News | July 12, 2023

Redlining Continues to Reverberate in Seattle Nearly a Century Later in Pedestrian Deaths

Could the decades-old government housing discrimination program, commonly called redlining, have anything to do with pedestrian fatalities today? According to a recent national study that compared federal redlining maps of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation with data on 2010–2019 pedestrian deaths from the national Fatality Analysis Reporting System, the answer is yes. A recent study…

News | February 28, 2018

Reducing failed deliveries, truck parking time could improve downtown Seattle congestion

In Amazon’s hometown, people turn to their computers to order everything from groceries to last-minute birthday presents to the odd toothbrush or medication forgotten from the store. If online shopping continues to grow at its current rate, there may be twice as many trucks delivering packages in Seattle’s city center within five years, a new…

News | June 5, 2021

Regional survey reveals work, leisure habits during the pandemic

No commute, fewer interruptions from co-workers, and the ability to work longer hours — all were factors that boosted feelings of productivity among people who worked from home during the first several months of the pandemic. At the same time, according to new data from the University of Washington, those who felt less productive while…

News | September 16, 2024

Register Today for Urban@UW’s presentation at Climate Week NYC

Urban@UW is heading to the big apple for Climate Week NYC, the largest international conference of business leaders, political change makers, scientists, and civil society representatives working for climate action. Rachel Berney, Faculty Director, and Kate Landis, Program Manager, will present “Call Me, Maybe? University-Community Partnerships for a Greener Tomorrow” on Monday, 9/23, from 5-7PM….

News | June 17, 2024

Rekindling Our Relationship with Wildfire

Written for the Climate One podcast, hosted by Greg Dalton and Ariana Brocious. Summer is just around the corner, and in addition to travel and vacation, that also means peak wildfire season. Recently we’ve seen some of the most destructive wildfires in recorded history. The images on the news of orange skies and opaque haze…

News | May 7, 2020

Rethinking the needs of a post-pandemic city

What will the future city look like after the pandemic? As political leaders around the country debate when to safely reopen the economy, city planners and designers have been pondering the implications of the pandemic for the future design of cities. Some suggest reducing urban density, while others predict a second wave of “white flight”…

News | September 23, 2021

Returning to the U District: Recovering from the pandemic with more changes ahead

The last 18 months have been hard for Mark Pinkaow and his wife Picha, owners of the University District restaurant Mark Thai Food Box. When COVID-19 largely shut down Seattle in March 2020, they changed the eatery’s format to takeout-only and barely scraped by. They opened, then closed again repeatedly over the next year due…

Scholar

Rick Mohler

Map | Mumbai

Ridlr real time traffic map of Mumbai

Ridlr gives you real time information about bus, local train, metro and monorail schedules. It factors in blocks and diversions & delays and cancellations when suggesting any mode of transport to you.

Scholar

Rob Corser

Funding

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Pioneering Ideas and a Culture of Health

The goal of the Pioneering Ideas Brief Proposal funding opportunity is to explore; to look into the future and put health first as we design for changes in how we live, learn, work and play; to wade into uncharted territory in order to better understand what new trends, opportunities and breakthrough ideas can enable everyone…

Center & Lab

Runstad Affiliate Fellows Program

The Affiliate Fellows Program brings together thought leaders from industry, faculty from the College of Built Environments, and students on the Master of Science in Real Estate for an 8-month program to examine real estate issues in the built environment. The goals of the Fellows program are to foster interaction between students and the academic…

News | February 25, 2020

Rural Hospital Closings are Affecting Reproductive Health Care

In some rural communities around the country, where over one-fifth of American women live, the closest hospital with specialized OB-GYN care can be a 100-mile drive away. More than half of rural women live 30 minutes or more from a hospital that provides perinatal care, which could mean the difference between life and death in…

News | August 7, 2018

Sammamish Utility first to install earthquake early warning technology

The Northeast Sammamish Water District is trying out earthquake early warning technology at a pumping station that sits on top of a half-million gallons of water. Check the Earthquake Tracker A simulation shows us what would happen if an earthquake were detected by the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. “The earthquake has hit, it’s a 7.5…

Scholar

Santosh Devasia

News | May 26, 2022

Scenic Tacoma road permanently closed to cars. Blame climate change

Crumbling cliffs have led Metro Parks Tacoma to permanently close two miles of Five Mile Drive, a popular park road built atop the bluffs of Tacoma’s Point Defiance 109 years ago. City officials are blaming climate change for the worsening erosion of a 150-foot-tall sea bluff that frames the Point Defiance peninsula as it juts…

Scholar

Scott Meschke

News | August 6, 2018

Sea-level rise report contains best projections yet for Washington’s coasts

One certainty under climate change is that global ocean levels are rising. A new report led by Washington Sea Grant and the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group provides the clearest picture yet of what to expect in Washington state. The report includes projections for more than 150 different sites along the Washington coastline, from…

Scholar

Seana Davidson

News | November 5, 2019

Seattle area has undergone record growth. Now voters may reshape its politics.

The Seattle region has more of almost everything than it did just six years ago, when voters chose to elect City Council members by districts. The area has added 135,000 homes, but has seen its population swell by 400,000. Homelessness has spiked by a third. Amazon’s workforce here has exploded from 13,000 to nearly 55,000….

News | November 19, 2020

Seattle could become the next 15-minute city

A growing number of politicians, urban planners and climate experts believes that 15 minutes is roughly the maximum amount of time city dwellers should spend getting to basic needs — without having to resort to a car. In the so-called “15-minute city,” nutritious food, libraries, health care, parks, cafés and other amenities should be within a short walk, bike ride or roll…

Funding

Seattle Foundation

Few regions in the world can match Seattle’s current growth and prosperity. But accompanying our good fortune are great challenges, including the widening disparities between rich and poor. Such inequities weaken the vibrancy of our community. Philanthropy can—and must—step in. Using our philanthropic expertise, deep roots in the community and network of partners, Seattle Foundation…

News | September 4, 2018

Seattle Growth Podcast 5.3: Homeless in Seattle

The fifth season of the Seattle Growth Podcast continues the wide-ranging conversation about the city’s growing homelessness crisis. “Each episode of this season brings voices from a variety of perspectives,” says podcast host Jeff Shulman Associate Professor of Marketing in the Foster school of Business. “Together, the episodes will help listeners understand homelessness from multiple angles, become better informed…

News | May 17, 2019

Seattle port could play key role in race to rule the Arctic

In the 1890s, Seattle was the gateway to the Klondike Gold Rush. As countries eye the warming Arctic in a 21st century rush to establish maritime trade routes and exploit natural resources, Puget Sound is once again poised to serve a vital support role. That, at least, is the vision that U.S. Sen. Patty Murray of…

News | December 24, 2020

Seattle scales back earthquake work on city bridges as costs soar

After promising Seattle voters that the city would reinforce 16 bridges to better withstand earthquakes, the Seattle Department of Transportation now says that work would cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than once expected. Instead of 16 bridges, the city plans to complete seismic retrofits on 11, leaving notable and costly locations like the…

News | January 3, 2017

Seattle to Portland in 15 minutes? UW students competing to build 700 mph hyperloop

Imagine a transportation system that could move you from place to place faster than a jet plane, without ever leaving the ground — a system that could take you from Seattle to Portland in just 15 minutes. In a chilly warehouse near Lake Union, a group of University of Washington students is trying to solve…

News | June 24, 2019

Seattle upgrades A/C at some community centers ahead of predicted wildfires

It wasn’t a picture postcard August last year in Seattle. Seattle icons, the Space Needle, ferries crossing the water, the Great Wheel spinning colorfully on the waterfront were barely visible because of smoke from Canadian wildfires. The Emerald City saw 24 days of moderately unhealthy levels of particulates in the air during the summer because…

News | May 7, 2024

Seattle-area housing market picks up, but buyers feel the squeeze

Written by Heidi Grover for The Seattle Times The Seattle area’s spring housing market continued to heat up in April, with more activity and higher home prices across the region, particularly in King County. The number of new listings and home sales climbed throughout the Puget Sound region in April, a typical seasonal uptick. But…

Map | Seattle

Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development GIS

​This interactive GIS map published by Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development makes essential GIS layers easily accessible. A few of the base layers include: building outlines, contours, parcels, pavement edges, and tree canopy cover. Zoning and environmentally critical areas are also highlighted, including layers for areas that are: flood prone, susceptible liquefaction, wetlands, steep…

News | June 25, 2021

Seattle’s new zero-emissions delivery hub is an experiment in slashing e-commerce emissions

As companies and governments strategize to make our exploding e-commerce economy more environmentally friendly, the “last mile” of a product’s journey—that is, the very last stage, from the transportation hub to the customer, currently appears the easiest to target. That’s especially true in cities, where higher population densities and shorter distances allow for the use…

News | November 7, 2019

Seattle’s next traffic challenge: Thousands of tunnel drivers will switch to city streets when tolls start Nov. 9

Whether you drive Highway 99 or not, the tunnel tolls starting Nov. 9 will disrupt your travel in downtown Seattle through higher costs, slower trips or more aggravation. That’s because thousands of toll-dodging motorists will crowd city streets, rather than pay for a 2-mile tunnel drive between Sodo and South Lake Union. State officials warn as…

News | July 13, 2018

Self-driving bikes: Seattle’s next transit revolution?

What does your future commute look like? Will you be taking a self-driving car, a solo-wheel, the hyperloop? What about … a self-driving bike? In this episode of ReInventors, Crosscut looks at how Professor Tyler Folsom and his students at University of Washington Bothell are spearheading a grassroots effort to test and develop lighter, more affordable, personal…

News | May 28, 2019

Self-driving cars: Heaven or hell?

Self-driving vehicles are expected to significantly change the way people move between cities and suburban neighborhoods in Washington state, but it is yet to be seen whether those will be positive changes for congestion and the environment. Fully-automated vehicles could allow large fleets of company vehicles to whisk people around city centers where space for…

Scholar

Seung-Jin Lee

Scholar

Shawn Stankewich

News | September 13, 2024

Shhh! The orcas can’t hear their dinner

Reported by John Ryan for KUOW/NPR When an orca hunts salmon, it clicks and buzzes. It sends a beam of sounds from its nasal passages into the murky depths in hopes that the sound waves will bounce back and reveal the location of its next nutritious meal. Those hopes are often dashed when noise from…

News | January 23, 2018

Should Seattle declare war on parking to fight climate change?

Make no mistake: The rising cost and declining amount of on-street parking downtown are part of a much bigger plan to reduce Seattle’s carbon footprint.University of Washington traffic engineer Mark Hallenbeck is adamant that Seattle should not go down the same road as Oslo. “Removing parking might have an environmental benefit, but the backlash from…

News | April 22, 2024

Skip the Traffic: Commuters Turn to Ferries to Get Around

Written by Linda Baker for The New York Times. As remote work reshapes the way people live and travel around cities, Americans are taking to the waterways not only as part of their commute but also as part of their daily lives. Some coastal cities are seeing ferry ridership bounce back after a decline during…

Research Beyond UW | Harvard University

Social Agency Lab

The Social Agency Lab is a research group at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. The lab studies the ways in which individuals, institutions and organizations shape social outcomes in cities.

News | December 8, 2022

Some freeways may be useable following ‘the Big One’ per new modeling by University of Washington

New modeling by the University of Washington of the impacts of a major Cascadia earthquake offers a less dire picture of the aftermath of the so-called “Big One” — specifically when it comes to highway bridges. Previous earthquake preparedness exercises have assumed that Interstate 5 and the highways to the Pacific Northwest coast would be…

News | October 16, 2018

Something’s killing coho salmon in Seattle, and car tires are a prime suspect

When autumn rains return to western Washington, so do coho salmon. But in many of the creeks they swim up, something in the water leaves fishes gasping for air. They die quickly, before they manage to spawn. A new study points at chemicals from tiny bits of car tires as a prime suspect in the…

News | July 19, 2018

Sound Transit rail stations could help solve our housing crisis

All of Sound Transit’s LINK light-rail stations offer opportunities to create vibrant, walkable mixed-use communities with significant amounts of new housing and reduced dependence on automobiles. We need a bold, regional approach to housing affordability, says Rick Mohler, Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture, and  Al Levine, Associate Faculty at the Department of Urban Design…

News | November 7, 2023

Spark Grants Complete Collaborative Research on Artificial Turf, Food Bank Home Delivery, and Urban Streetwear

An electronic denim jacket, an artistic collaboration to depict Black residents’ urban experiences. (credit: Bret Halperin) Over the past year, three teams of researchers from the University of Washington tackled a host of urban challenges in our region with the support of Urban@UW’s Spark Grants. In September 2022,  Urban@UW awarded $20,000 to each team in…

News | October 25, 2022

Sparking Climate Connections – UW Lightning Talks on Climate Change

Addressing our climate crisis can’t be done alone; this all-hands-on-deck moment requires as many voices, disciplines and perspectives as possible to forge connections that will inspire collective action. Urban@UW and the EarthLab Advisory Board of Deans invite you to participate in an exciting two-part event bringing together the rich variety of climate change related research…

Center & Lab

STAR Lab

A strong ITS research program and its corresponding supporting laboratory are indispensable resources for high-quality training of ITS professionals and solving traffic problems in the Puget Sound region. Major objectives of the STAR Lab are: support advanced ITS research; cultivate ITS professionals; explore effective solutions to transportation problems; provide hand-on training instruments and software applications…

Scholar

Stephen J. Burges

Scholar

Stephen Page

Scholar

Steve J. Mooney

Scholar

Steve Muench

News | September 10, 2017

Storefront Studio creates vision for downtown block

Three graduate students and their professor from the University of Washington College of Built Environments spent much of this summer visiting Gig Harbor and creating a plan that could change and enhance an area in the downtown waterfront business district. The Storefront Studio Project, as the endeavor is called, began in June when the students…

News | March 26, 2021

Street smarts: University of Washington researchers develop new roadside device to improve traffic safety, mobility and infrastructure management

“Mobile Unit for Sensing Traffic” is a next generation Internet of Things device The rise in connected and autonomous vehicles and other transportation innovations have transformed municipalities into smart cities and improved the communication of roadway conditions to drivers. These cutting-edge technologies are part of a growing movement toward intelligent transportation systems (ITS), a transportation…

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 | April 17, 2018

Students research historic South, East Tacoma for Livable City project

The City of Tacoma’s Historic Preservation Office is partnering with the University of Washington on a Livable City Year project to identify historic resources in South and East Tacoma. For this project, graduate and undergraduate students are researching the histories of two neighborhoods: McKinley Hill in East Tacoma, and the Edison Neighborhood along South Tacoma…

News | September 8, 2020

Study provides way to more accurately measure impact of COVID-19 response on air pollution

Stay-at-home orders issued in Seattle in response to COVID-19 led to a significant drop in some of the most harmful air pollutants to human health, according to a novel method used by the University of Washington School of Public Health. The researchers developed a new method to account for any differences in weather conditions –…

News | September 12, 2018

Summer Design/Build Studio 2018

Food and the ability to prepare it are fundamental components of life. Places of food preparation–whether a home kitchen or a fire pit–serve not only their most explicit functions but also act as cultural gathering spaces for families and communities. Food preparation poses particularly unique challenges in Seattle’s homeless communities for individuals, families and larger…

Center & Lab

Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center

The Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center (SCTL) is headed by Anne Goodchild and Barb Ivanov and investigates the logistics and infrastructures for local and global supply chains critical to the economics and well-being of urban systems world-wide. The SCTL Center is a world leader in supply chain, transportation and logistics research and education serving…

Center & Lab

Sustainable Transportation Lab

In the Sustainable Transportation Lab, we study how to make our transportation system more economically viable, environmentally benign, while ensuring access to opportunities for all.

Degree Program

Sustainable Transportation: Planning and Livable Communities (Cert)

Examine the important issues involved in sustainable transportation planning. Review policies and programs that encourage mixed use development and higher density levels in order to promote modes of transportation other than the single occupancy vehicle. Study the impact different transportation options have on the environment and sustainability. Explore the movement of goods as well as…

Degree Program

Sustainable Urban Development (BA)

Accomplishing sustainable urban development is a crucial challenge for the twenty-first century. The University of Washington Tacoma is at the forefront of engaging and educating undergraduate students on this topic. The Sustainable Urban Development degree provides students with a critical and rigorous training in ecological, political, economic, and social aspects of urban development processes.

News | April 7, 2021

Taskar Center researchers offer a roadmap for more robust modeling of pedestrian mobility on a city-wide scale

Many approaches to measuring and supporting city-wide mobility lack the level of detail required to truly understand how pedestrians navigate the urban landscape, not to mention the quality of their journey. Transit apps can direct someone to the nearest bus stop, but they may not account for obstacles or terrain on the way to their…

News | December 4, 2016

Techstars Teams with Amazon for Alexa Startup Accelerator in Seattle

Alexa, what’s the epicenter of innovation in speech as the new user interface? A good case can be made for Seattle, following an announcement today from Techstars and Amazon. Techstars, a top-tier startup accelerator with locations around the world and a major presence in Seattle since 2010, will begin a second program here next year…

News | July 5, 2017

The biggest cliché in tech is hurting cities

If you don’t live in Silicon Valley, chances are you live in its close relative: “the next Silicon Valley.” The label has been slapped with abandon on towns, cities, regions, or sometimes entire countries. All it takes is an uptick in job growth, an influx of startups, or a new coding bootcamp for the cliche…

News | May 14, 2020

The cost of fast and free shipping

Would deliveries dropped off to everyone pollute less than all of us driving to stores? Yes, in principle, but probably not in practice. Anne Goodchild, founding director of the Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center at the University of Washington, has found that consolidating deliveries in one area produces fewer climate-harming emissions than the same people driving back…

News | November 6, 2020

The Digital Divide: Gender and technology in an unequal world

All over the world, digital literacy and access to technology are commonly divided along gender and racial lines. During a global pandemic that has forced an even stronger reliance on technology than before, the disproportionate and inadequate access that lower-income women of color face is clear, both around the United States and in the Global…

Funding

The Funders’ Network: Green Stormwater Infrastructure

Partners for Places, an initiative of The Funders' Network, enhances local capacity to build equitable and sustainable communities in the United States and Canada. These grants support the planning and implementing of green stormwater infrastructure. Water directors of a city, county, or utility and one or more place-based foundations are eligible to apply. For Round…

News | August 22, 2019

The future of the global shipping industry is… bikes

In the rush to get packages to your doorstep faster, delivery companies are experimenting with far-out technologies like drones and robots that can circumvent traffic—and that, most importantly, don’t need a conventional place to park while they deliver. But companies like UPS and the U.K.-based company DPD are considering a low-tech option, too: bikes. DPD is rolling out a pilot program…

News | November 18, 2020

The pandemic changed our daily routines. Here’s how that’s impacting mental health, productivity and the environment

Few people think about the impact their daily routine has on themselves, or even the planet. But the small actions — from what you eat for breakfast to how you commute to work — are having an effect. Urban Design and Planning doctoral student Xiao Shi has long been interested in the small and large impacts of people’s…

Research Beyond UW | University of Calgary

The Urban Lab

THE URBAN LAB, Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary is a research group dealing with urban design, community planning, and urban development issues. Established in 2000, the Urban Lab is an ongoing experiment in education, research and outreach, and is an example of university - community collaboration involving faculty, students and the public. We…

Research Beyond UW | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Urban Risk Lab

The Urban Risk Lab at MIT develops methods and technologies to embed risk reduction and preparedness into the design of cities and regions to increase the resilience of local communities. Operating at the intersection of ecology and infrastructure, rural and urban, research and action; the Urban Risk Lab is an interdisciplinary organization of researchers and…

News | January 19, 2023

The UW and the Seattle waterfront renewal

Seattle’s waterfront renewal is one of the region’s most ambitious and innovative undertakings since the Seattle World’s Fair transformed the city in 1962. Finally reconnecting Seattle’s waterfront to its downtown, this $750 million renovation and restoration will create a network of public parks, cultural celebration spaces and an expanded aquarium — while building a sophisticated,…

News | July 18, 2017

There’s a map for that

If you own a cell phone or a mobile device you’re likely creating data that could be mapped. “When you add a Yelp review or geotag a tweet you’re actually volunteering geographic information, you are mapping,” said UW Tacoma Assistant Professor Britta Ricker. Most of us use maps to determine our location, to find out…

News | February 17, 2022

These scientists are fighting the pandemic with sewage

Sewage stinks, and it’s often laden with disease. But it can also be of tremendous value to public health. Cutting-edge biomedical research sometimes begins with prying a heavy steel lid off a sewer hole, to gain access to the data gushing below. Studies of wastewater have helped scientists pinpoint where Covid-19 variants have popped up,…

Center & Lab

THINK (Transportation-Human Interaction and Network Knowledge) Lab

The THINK (Transportation-Human Interaction and Network Knowledge) Lab studies the sustainability and resilience of a city through the lens of human beings interacting with the physical environment. We generate new knowledge and insights for use in city planning, infrastructure development and policy design. Our research results facilitate real-time disaster response and recovery efforts. Our work…

News | January 9, 2020

This is what Seattle’s new neighborhood could look like

Architecture and planning students love to wrestle with big ideas. And while their end-of-the-quarter presentations sometimes include out-of-the-box ideas, they usually don’t have the attention of public officials. But this time was different. Students with the University of Washington Built Environments Studio, taught by Rick Mohler (Architecture) and David Blum (Urban Design and Planning) in…

News | August 7, 2019

This startup wants to tame the chaos of city street parking

From the summer haze, and the cars and Ubers and bicycles and scooters and cement trucks and delivery vans and city buses that operate within it, emerges a white truck, the words “Belair Foods” and the image of a carrot plastered on its side. As a small crowd watches, the truck pulls into a parking spot….

News | December 8, 2020

Tire dust killing coho salmon returning to Puget Sound, new research shows

First they circle. Then they gasp at the surface of the water. Soon they can’t swim. Then they die. For decades now, scientists have known something was killing beautiful, adult coho salmon as soon as they hit Seattle’s urban waters, ready to spawn. They had escaped the orcas, the fishermen, traveled thousands of miles, only…

News | June 9, 2020

To address health inequities, Black folks need the right to move without harm

On a crisp afternoon last fall, Douglas Pullen, a 69-year-old Black man, was nearly hit by a white driver during his daily walk through his Seattle neighborhood. Having witnessed this, Kate Hoerster, assistant professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UW School of Medicine, checked on Mr. Pullen after he was safely on the other side…

News | November 21, 2016

To Californians: The Hours You Spend in Traffic May Soon Be Used to Generate Electricity

LOS ANGELES, CA – If you’re a Los Angeles native, resident or even visitor, you will probably cringe at the combination of “LA” and “rush hour.” Sitting in LA traffic is an excruciatingly painful task, and not just because of the hours you spend putting pressure on your lower back. If your brakes aren’t screeching…

News | August 1, 2019

To help the environment, should you shop in-store or online?

Is cyber-shopping terrible for the environment?  Some say yes, with all those trucks heading out into suburbia to deliver your latest gadget, fashion garment or book. But online retailers insist theirs is the greener delivery route — much better than you driving to the store. So, who is right? And are there even better ways? This…

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…

News | November 3, 2020

To save the planet, get more electric vehicles into used car lots

Electric vehicles are getting more popular. Now they’re getting flashy too: new electric pickup trucks, new electric semis, new electric sports cars, a new electric G-Wagen. But all that zippy sexiness only matters to a small slice of the US. Seventy percent of the vehicles sold in the country last year were used, according to data from Edmunds. So when…

News | April 24, 2017

Toward greener construction: UW professor collab sets markers for carbon across life of buildings

A University of Washington-led research group has taken an important step toward measuring — and ultimately reducing — the global carbon footprint of building construction and long-term maintenance. The Carbon Leadership Forum is a collaborative effort among academics and industry professionals based in the UW’s College of Built Environments that studies reducing carbon emissions over…

News | May 18, 2020

Traffic in Seattle area slowly returning

If you’ve left home, you’ve probably noticed. A few more people are on the roads. “We are seeing traffic slowly start to come back,” said Bob Pishue, transportation analyst for the traffic data company INRIX. Pishue said as the COVID-19 shutdown began, traffic in the Seattle area dropped 54%. It’s now rebounded a bit to…

Map | New York

Transit Time NYC

​Interactive map visualizes subway transit times from any point in the city

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…

Scholar

Travis Thonstad

News | January 15, 2021

Uber and Lyft operating in US cities linked to rises in car ownership

The introduction of ride-sharing companies, including Uber and Lyft, has been associated with a 0.7 percent increase in car ownership on average in US urban areas. “In a lot of respects, this is not surprising,” says Os Keyes, PhD student at the Department of Human-Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. “If…

News | August 5, 2016

Uneven: Mobility, Sidewalks, and Maps (including a map-a-thon!)

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…

News | January 9, 2024

Univ. of Washington set to break ground on 69-acre redevelopment to create Seattle innovation hub

The University of Washington this year expects to break ground on a new building that will anchor an ambitious, innovation-focused redevelopment called Portage Bay Crossing. The project will cover 69 acres of the southwest portion of the Seattle campus, revitalizing and unifying an area of buildings that officials called old and underutilized. UW leaders recently…

News | February 24, 2017

Universities establish joint center to use data for social good in Cascadia region

In an expansion of regional cooperation, the University of British Columbia and the University of Washington today announced the establishment of the Cascadia Urban Analytics Cooperative to use data to help cities and communities address challenges from traffic to homelessness. The largest industry-funded research partnership between UBC and the UW, the collaborative will bring faculty,…

News | April 15, 2019

University of Washington researchers want to help Uber and Lyft protect data and share it with cities

Cities where Uber and Lyft operate have a data problem. The University of Washington wants to provide the solution. Companies such as Uber and Lyft are sitting on mounds of valuable data about where and when riders move around cities. Transportation officials are eager to get their hands on that information but the companies have…

News | October 7, 2020

University of Washington studies future of urban package delivery with lockers and street sensors

Fed up with porch pirates snatching your packages? Missed yet another delivery that requires a signature because you couldn’t hear the delivery person knock over your umpteenth video meeting of the day? Property manager at your apartment or condo building sending yet another nagging note to pick up packages because the mailroom is full? The…

News | March 13, 2024

University of Washington study finds cities must prioritize youth mental health

Excerpted from KOIN/Channel Six in Portland Written by Michaela Bourgeois Researchers at the University of Washington conducted an international survey that found cities need to focus on youth mental health as younger generations flock to urban areas. Starting in April 2020, researchers worked with the nonprofit citiesRISE to survey over 500 people in 53 countries…

News | January 16, 2021

University of Washington tests wastewater to track COVID-19 outbreaks in Seattle neighborhoods

The University of Washington is studying a new way to track COVID-19 outbreaks in Seattle neighborhoods, and let’s just say they are not letting anything go to waste. The College of Engineering is investigating a new large-scale testing method to detect COVID-19 in wastewater by pulling sewage samples from Seattle pump stations. The goal is to quantify how many…

Degree Program

Urban Design and Planning (Minor, Cert, MUP, dual MLA-MUP, PhD)

Our core mission is to develop a community of inquiry, learning, and practice that helps urban regions to become more livable, just, economically effective, and environmentally sound through a democratic process of urban design and planning.

Research Beyond UW | Columbia University

Urban Design Lab

The Urban Design Lab (UDL) of the Earth Institute and GSAPP works to find innovative solutions to the sustainable development issues confronting cities. The UDL conducts multidisciplinary applied design research in collaboration with community-based organizations and other public and private interests. The UDL's team works closely with outside experts in architecture, ecology, economics, environmental science,…

Research Beyond UW | University of Tokyo

Urban Design Lab

The objective of the Urban Design Lab is to strike a balance between scientific research, teaching, and practical urban design work in the field. We encourage students to develop practical skills as well as a sound theoretical knowledge in order to enable them practicing in all areas of urban design; in the contexts of spatial…

Center & Lab

Urban Freight Lab

The Urban Freight Lab (UFL) brings together transportation engineers, urban planners, retailers, freight carriers, technology companies supporting transportation logistics, and multifamily and commercial developers and operators. The UFL’s Final 50 Feet Research Program analyzes processes, develops potential solutions, and pilot tests operational improvements in the final leg of the urban goods delivery system. The final…

News | May 30, 2023

Urban Freight Lab Awarded $2M Federal Grant for Curb Digitization

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) program has awarded a $2 million grant to a cross-sectoral team comprised of UW’s UPUrban Freight Lab and Open Mobility Foundation, and led by the Seattle Department of Transportation. The award will support implementing data-driven curb space management initiatives to improve access to curb…

News | November 21, 2018

Urban Freight Lab will help UPS evaluate its new e-bike delivery service in Seattle

Seattle is one of the most congested cities in America, in part due to delivery trucks taking up space on crowded streets. One solution could be for companies to make deliveries using bicycles instead. UPS announced today that it will be pilot-testing deliveries with cargo e-bikes in downtown Seattle. This test is expected to last a…

Center & Lab

Urban Infrastructure Lab

The Urban Infrastructure Lab (UIL) brings together students and faculty across numerous disciplines with a shared interest in the planning, governance, finance, design, development, economics, and environmental effects of infrastructure. The interests of the UIL span the systems critical to economic and social well-being, such as energy, water, health, transportation, education, and communications. Across these…

Research Beyond UW | University of Illinois

Urban Research Lab

An ongoing Intelligent Cities project, URL: Urban Research Lab explores the implications of emerging technologies and distributed computing for urban infrastructure. While infrastructure supports many different human activities, the lab studies the potential of ubiquitous and context-aware computing, defined as “media of communication functionally bound to a location”---and, more specifically, of intelligent infrastructure---adaptive systems used…

News | May 10, 2017

Urban Scholar Highlight: Christopher Meek

Christopher Meek is a faculty member in University of Washington’s Department of Architecture and a director in the Integrated Design Lab in the Center for Integrated Design, located in the Bullitt Center. He teaches during the school year and the rest of his time is focused on research on high-performance buildings. We sat down with…

News | April 23, 2018

Urban Scholar Highlight: Margaret O’Mara

Margaret O’Mara is a Professor in the Department of History and a founding member of Urban@UW. She writes and teaches about the urban, political, and economic history of the modern United States. What led you to your current research interests? I’ve always been interested in how politics and government work with business and economics, and…

News | February 22, 2022

Urban stormwater presents pollution challenge

Wastewater and industrial effluent generally come from specific locations. But runoff, which is primarily carried by stormwater, is what environmental engineers call nonpoint source pollution—in other words, it flows in from all over the place. “It’s pollution coming from a whole bunch of small sources that individually create maybe a larger-than-expected issue because none of…

Degree Program

Urban Studies (Cert, BA, MA, MS)

The Urban Studies Program offers a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies with formal options in Global Urbanism and Community Development & Planning. The degree starts with an introduction into the discipline of urban studies with course topics on exploring cities, world development, and urban studies “in practice”. The formal options deliver focused theory and…

Research Beyond UW | Imperial College London

Urban Systems Lab

Cities are central to economic growth and social activity with a growing share of the global population. Increasingly, the need of cities to improve performance in services and infrastructure is creating not only technical, social, and business challenges, but also opportunities as new niches are opened on the basis of new technology and a better…

Research Beyond UW | Harvard University

Urban Theory Lab

In the early 1970s, Henri Lefebvre put forward the radical hypothesis of the complete urbanization of society. This required, in his view, a radical shift from the analysis of urban form to the investigation of urbanization processes. The Urban Theory Lab builds upon Lefebvre’s approach to investigate emergent sociospatial formations under early twenty-first century capitalism.…

Research Beyond UW | Durham University

Urban Worlds

Urban Worlds is a research cluster that was formed in 2009 to reflect the department’s international standing in cutting-edge urban research. Its purpose is to provide a forum that brings together existing urban research within the department and to generate new lines of inquiry. The urban geographical research in the department aims to understand the…

News | May 24, 2021

Urban@UW Announces Another Round of Funding Through Research Spark Grants

Urban@UW is excited to be able to provide another cycle of funding for small-scale, new or emergent projects in urban systems. Our Urban@UW Research Spark Grants RFP is intended to catalyze new ideas, connections, and next steps for UW faculty and research staff undertaking cross-disciplinary and community-engaged urban scholarship. The application window opens June 14,…

News | February 19, 2020

Urban@UW announces Research Spark Grants

UPDATE: In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on academic and research activities, Urban@UW has made the difficult decision to postpone our Spark Grants program. In addition to recognizing the varied strains and hardship our community is experiencing, we want to ensure that new collaborations launch in a context that promotes meeting and…

News | October 20, 2017

Urban@UW compiles Faculty Highlights Report for research, teaching and engagement on homelessness

As part of its recently launched Homelessess Research Initiative, Urban@UW has collaborated with faculty and staff across all three UW campuses to compile a broad-ranging selection of powerful and robust projects addressing homelessness from a research lens. Check out the Faculty Highlights Report to learn more about these efforts and the people behind them.

News | November 26, 2024

Urban@UW is working toward a future where cities are hubs of innovation, inclusivity, & sustainability.

Research-to-Action Teams 2023-2024 In April of 2023 the teams selected for the inaugural cohort of the Research to Action Collaboratory (RAC) were announced. These groups combine the research capabilities of University of Washington scholars with frontline leaders embedded in their communities and government officials who can codify change.  The Research-to-Action Collaboratory provides the teams with…

News | September 5, 2024

Urban@UW Presenting at New York Climate Week

Urban@UW Director Rachel Berney and Program Manager Kate Landis will present on the Research-to Action Collaboratory later this month at New York Climate Week, as part of the New York Climate Exchange.  “We are thrilled to be one of the very few university centers invited to participate in New York Climate Week. This well- publicized…

News | October 2, 2024

Urban@UW Presents at Climate Week NYC

Last week Urban@UW’s Director Rachel Berney and Program Manager Kate Landis presented on the Research to Action Collaboratory at Climate Week NYC, as a guest of the New York Climate Exchange. Leaders from all sectors met on Governors Island, just south of Manhattan, to discuss climate adaptations, potential partnerships, and new technology in carbon reduction….

News | November 26, 2024

Urban@UW unites research, community insight, and policy to drive innovation for resilient and equitable cities.

Inclusive Data-Driven Innovation for the Future of Cities Urban@UW extends the understanding of cities—from people, buildings, infrastructure, and energy to economics, policy, culture, art, and nature—beyond individual topics to dynamically interdependent systems, so that we can holistically design and steward vibrant and welcoming cities in which future generations will thrive. In partnership with the College…

News |

Urban@UW’s Research to Action Collaboratory provides funding, facilitation, & tools to empower cross-disciplinary teams to solve urban problems

About the RAC The Research to Action Collaboratory serves as a catalyst for research teams, building their transformational collaborative capacity to address today’s most pressing urban challenges. The RAC combines financial support, thought partnership, and skill-building to increase the capacity of scholars, community stakeholders, and the UW for impactful, collaborative research. Today’s most pressing problems—from…

News | October 24, 2019

US transit ridership is down: Can San Diego’s speedy commuter rail plan buck the trend?

Elected officials are preparing to ask San Diegans to approve not one but two tax increases to fund billions of dollars in bus and rail investments, including a San Diego Grand Central Station to connect riders to the airport. The ask comes at a time when many cities around the country — from Atlanta to Houston to…

News | May 31, 2018

UW CoMotion program encourages entreprenurial activity in Spokane

In Seattle, startup companies and entrepreneurship are viewed as old hat. University of Washington medical researchers, for example, have long worked to turn ideas into products and services. In Spokane, that entrepreneurial spirit is still in the development phase. While Spokane does have some venture capital, this is not yet a place known as a…

News | October 25, 2016

UW EE Faculty to Tackle Urban Mobility

For urban roadways, traffic-choked streets have become synonymous with the weekday commute. Over the decades, strategic conversations between city officials, engineers and policy makers have sought to lessen congestion and provide increased transportation options. However, as cities continue to develop and populations increase, the results of years of conversation cannot materialize fast enough. On the…

News | August 16, 2017

UW gets federal money to boost early-warning system for West Coast earthquakes

The U.S. Geological Survey has awarded $4.9 million to six universities and a nonprofit to help advance an early-warning system for earthquakes along the West Coast. The federal agency says the ShakeAlert system could give people seconds or up to a minute of warning before strong shaking begins. The University of Washington, Central Washington University…

News | October 27, 2015

UW initiative aims to tackle city, region’s most pressing urban issues

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…

News | June 24, 2015

UW Professor Outlines Key Factors in Puget Sound’s Transportation Future

Mark Hallenbeck, director of the University of Washington’s Washington State Transportation Center and a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has been studying Northwest transit for years. Looking to the future he has identified the following key considerations that will play important roles in shaping the regions transportation: Growth will be inward,…

News | December 20, 2016

UW professor: Seattle exposed to most ‘chronically high noise levels’ of any city in US

How Seattle’s development is impacting your health and, more specifically, your ears is not something being taken into account by city leaders, according to a University of Washington professor. And changing an ordinance that mutes construction’s noise pollution to match other cities from around the country might be a potent elixir, he says. Eliot Brenowitz,…

News | November 2, 2021

UW receives $2M from National Science Foundation to design an ‘adaptable society’

A team led by the University of Washington has received a nearly $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to further research into how urban societal systems can be organized to be both efficient and resilient. The Leading Engineering for America’s Prosperity, Health and Infrastructure (LEAP-HI) project, based in the UW College of Engineering, supports fundamental research to…

News | June 12, 2023

UW Research Identifies Success Factors for High-speed Rail Projects

A new research report out of the University of Washington examines data on high-speed rail systems around the world to mine key insights on how a similar undertaking could work in the Cascadia region, a source of considerable investment and opportunity for agencies and private sector partners. The report comes as Washington’s state legislature has…

News | May 26, 2020

UW research team seeks campus input with survey on coronavirus mobility impacts

Three professors are teaming up for a study of the mobility impacts of the coronavirus — and they are inviting UW faculty, staff and students to complete a short online survey to assist the research. The research is being conducted by Anne Vernez Moudon, professor emerita of urban design and planning in the College of Built Environments, with Jeff…

News | August 22, 2016

UW student project taps ORCA cards, unlocks data trove

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…

News | March 17, 2023

UW Study Details New Seattle Area Commute Patterns

In the post-Covid era, how we get around is changing. A new study from the University of Washington’s Mobility Innovation Center and Commute Seattle finds traffic is back not just because of work trips. 75% of people drive alone for errands. “If we can make transit, biking, and walking for those types of trips, we’ll…

News | October 13, 2021

UW study provides rare window into work life of app-based drivers during pandemic

When you get into the car of the app-based driver you just tapped up on your phone, you expect and hope the driver and the car are safe and capable of getting you where you need to go. Apps rate drivers, which you can see. But what if the driver is sick? What if the…

News | June 17, 2015

UW team “Hackcessible” wins Hack The Commute Competition

UW team wins City of Seattle sponsored Hack the Commute with a web-based map that helps those Hackcessible Access Map (in beta) >

News | March 15, 2024

UW’s College of Built Environments Professor Faces an Electrifying Challenge

Reported by Jen Moss for the University of Washington’ College of Built Environments King County Metro (Metro), which serves a daily average of over 250,000 riders across more than 203 square miles of the county, has an emissions challenge. Their zero-carbon emissions target, set by the King County Council, must be met by 2035. This…

Center & Lab

Value Sensitive Design Lab

Pioneered in the 1990s, value sensitive design seeks to provide theory and method to account for human values in a principled and systematic manner throughout the design process. Central to this approach is engaging our moral and technical imaginations. We are designers and researchers, thinkers and doers. We design toolkits and methods. We work on…

News | November 1, 2018

Valuing older buildings: Architecture professor’s book argues for reuse rather than wrecking ball

In her new book, Kathryn Rogers Merlino, University of Washington associate professor in the department of Architecture in the College of Built Environments, argues for the environmental benefit of reusing buildings rather than tearing them down and building anew. “I was trained as both an architect and architectural historian,” Merlino says, “and have always been drawn…

Scholar

Vanessa Galaviz

News | May 10, 2018

Vikram Prakash’s ‘ArchitectureTalk’ podcast explores topics ‘at the edge of the known’

Vikram Prakash says his weekly “ArchitectureTalk” podcast got its start, as many things do, from a student’s idea. Prakash is a professor of architecture in the University of Washington College of Built Environments. An architect himself, he is also an author, a theorist and an architectural historian. He said he has always felt “energized” by discussions in…

Map | Mumbai Nairobi New York São Paulo Seattle

Visualizing Cities – An Open Platform

Visualization as a tool for analysis, exploration and communication has become a driving force in the task of unravelling the complex urban fabrics that form our cities. This platform tries to bring together urban visualization projects from around the globe.

News | October 25, 2022

Washed away, not today— Westport schools participate in tsunami drill

Crossing the bridge on Highway 105 over the oyster beds, Westport’s low spit of land is barely even a suggestion in the mist and fog. The smell of salt is heavy in the air, reminding us that the sea is always close, and on this Thursday morning, students in Westport practice what to do if…

Center & Lab

Washington Center for Real Estate Research

The Washington Center for Real Estate Research (WCRER) was initially established by the Board of Regents at Washington State University to provide a bridge between academic study and research on real estate topics and the professional real estate industries. It served that mission at WSU until merging with the Runstad Center at the beginning of…

Center & Lab

Washington State Transportation Center (TRAC)

The Washington State Transportation Center (TRAC) is a cooperative, interdisciplinary transportation research agency. Its members, Washington State University (WSU), the University of Washington (UW), and the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), formed TRAC in 1983 to coordinate transportation research efforts—both state and commercial, public and private—and to develop research opportunities both nationally and locally.…

News | December 6, 2016

Welcoming the residents of Tent City 3

Winter is approaching, and with it the need for shelter for our neighbors who find themselves without permanent housing only grows. Earlier this year, at the request of the Tent City Collective – a group of students, alumni and Tent City 3 residents – our University engaged in a public process to assess whether we…

News | June 4, 2020

West Seattle Bridge is a surprise crisis, but plenty of other aging Seattle bridges are also vulnerable

In January, if West Seattle commuters caught in a bottleneck had gazed out the window at their high bridge and wondered about its safety, a look at federal bridge ratings may have calmed their nerves. The bridge was labeled sufficient. In a catchall rating out of 100, it had a respectable 69. By the spring,…

News | July 20, 2020

West Seattle’s low swing bridge is cracked, too, and needs repairs

Like its taller neighbor, the low-rise West Seattle swing bridge has developed shear cracks in its concrete girder, which will need repairs. But this time, Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) officials say they identified the risks soon enough to contain the damage and keep the swing bridge open for travelers. The lower bridge is the…

News | May 13, 2020

What cracked the West Seattle Bridge? Hidden design problem may have doomed it all along

The West Seattle Bridge, closed in March because of excessive cracking, might have been doomed since the day it opened in 1984. City officials have listed several factors that could have contributed to the damage, including more and heavier buses and trucks, a seventh lane added years ago, a jammed rubber bearing that thwarts thermal expansion,…

News | January 23, 2024

What Happened to Seattle’s Relationship with Boeing?

The aftermath of the Alaska blowout reveals that the connection is slowly unraveling. From Seattle Met Written by Benjamin Cassidy IN THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH of the fuselage blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this month, Margaret O’Mara noticed something that would’ve once been unthinkable in Seattle. The University of Washington history professor observed that locals…

News | December 7, 2018

What if Alaska’s earthquake happened here?

Last Friday, a 7.0 earthquake rattled Anchorage, Alaska. Amazingly, no one died — and revamped building codes enacted in the wake of the state’s deadly 1964 Good Friday quake meant the city was more prepared than most. Outside of a few structure fires, damage was kept to a minimum. But striking images of tectonic apocalypse…

News | March 23, 2020

What is Causing Late Buses in Seattle?

Under typical conditions, Seattle has some of the most congested traffic in the nation. To prepare for when things return to normal, University of Washington researchers are carrying out a research project to investigate reasons for these delays. While a bus could be late for many reasons, one holdup is that it has to compete…

News | January 6, 2016

What motivates people to walk and bike? It varies by income

Lower- and middle-income King County residents who live in denser neighborhoods — with stores, libraries and other destinations within easy reach — are more likely to walk or bike, according to new University of Washington research. But neighborhood density didn’t motivate higher-income residents to leave their cars at home, the transportation engineers found. Of the…

News | March 3, 2020

What New Upzoning Will Mean for the U District

The U District has changed a lot in the last couple of decades. But it is about to change even more dramatically. In 2021, a Sound Transit light rail station will open in the heart of the U District at N.E. 43rd Street and Brooklyn Avenue N.E. Light rail will transform the U District into…

News | June 22, 2017

What the bond between homeless people and their pets demonstrates about compassion

A video camera captures an interview with a man named Spirit, who relaxes in an outdoor plaza on a sunny afternoon. Of his nearby service dogs, Kyya and Miniaga, he says, “They mean everything to me, and I mean everything to them.”In another video, three sweater-clad dogs scamper around a Los Angeles park, while their…

News | February 21, 2018

What would a truly disabled-accessible city look like?

To David Meere, a visually impaired man from Melbourne, among the various obstacles to life in cities is another that is less frequently discussed: fear. “The fear of not being able to navigate busy, cluttered and visually oriented environments is a major barrier to participation in normal life,” says Meere, 52, “be that going to…

News | November 9, 2018

What would happen in Seattle during a large-magnitude earthquake?

If a large-magnitude earthquake were to hit Seattle, what percentage of buildings would be safe? This listener question was posed to Jeff Berman, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the UW.   Continue to listen to the Radio broadcast

News | May 16, 2019

What you need to know before getting on an electric scooter

The possibility of electric powered scooters in Seattle will also come with the possibility of numerous personal injuries. Those unfortunate victims often end up at Harborview Medical Center and doctors at that level one trauma center said they want residents to take better care of themselves as they explore these new alternative ways to travel….

News | June 17, 2019

When roads ‘blow up’: How heat could play a role in pavement durability

Seattle hit a record 95 degrees on Wednesday, the hottest June 12 on record and the hottest day of 2019 so far. The record heat is what likely caused a part of 4th Avenue S. to buckle in Seattle’s SODO neighborhood. We’ve seen it before. The rays from the sun heat up pavement hotter than the surrounding air….

News | August 19, 2017

Why Architects should care about public health

Andrew Dannenberg, an Affiliate Professor at the School of Public Health and the College of Built Environments, writes about the importance of architects recognizing human health: while architects have long recognized the importance of human health —including physical, mental, and social well-being — as part of their mission, implementation sometimes reflects a spirit of compliance…

News | August 24, 2017

Why Seattle is poised to be a leader in ‘smart city’ technology and regulations

New technology is helping local government create “smarter” cities in a variety of ways, from adaptive traffic lights to open data platforms to advanced utility meters. But with innovation comes complication. Privacy, security, and equality challenges are inevitable when the public sector tries to implement technology with the help of private companies. This was the…

News | June 25, 2024

Why social media rarely leads to constructive political action

Written by Stefan Milne for UW News. While social media platforms are rife with problems — from harassment to misinformation — many argue that the platforms also nurture political movements, such as the Arab Spring and #MeToo. But in her new book “Log Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix,” Katherine Cross, a University…

News | May 7, 2020

Will coronavirus kill the electric scooter?

The electric scooter is, depending on your point of view, a dangerous blight of the sidewalk or a marvelous new species of transit that is perfect for the zero-emissions future city. So it’s a cause for celebration — or mourning — that the novel coronavirus is dealing the world’s networks of shared scooters a heavy…

News | August 27, 2020

Will King County public transit survive COVID-19?

Despite coronavirus, hundreds of thousands of people living in King County continue to rely on buses, light rail, ferries and other modes of public transportation to get around. “There’s still a whole lot of people who are counting on transit as a lifeline,” said Alex Hudson, executive director of the Transportation Choices Coalition. “People know transit…

News | July 14, 2020

Will the pandemic create a move back to the suburbs?

We’re starting to get an understanding of just how much tax revenue the state is losing because of the pandemic. The latest numbers from the state Department of Transportation are staggering. The pandemic has seen a cratering of traffic, not only on the roads, but on the ferries, at the Department of Licensing, and at…

News | July 26, 2022

With extreme heat, we can’t build roads and railways as we used to

Roads and airport runways buckling. Train tracks warping. Bridges swelling. These are just some of the damaging effects extreme heat has had on critical infrastructure in recent years, as heat waves have become more frequent and intense — a stark reminder, experts say, of the need to adjust quickly to a warming planet. For roadways…

News | April 14, 2020

With more people staying home, Washington skies are cleaner

Since the coronavirus pandemic sent Washingtonians indoors to help flatten the curve of infection, Seattleites who open a window or venture outside for socially distanced nature therapy swear something’s different in the air. “It’s for sure much cleaner,” says lifelong Seattle resident Cathryn Stenson, who has been walking through nearby parks more than normal to take…

News | May 16, 2018

With world’s worst air, Indian city struggles to track pollution

In the world’s most polluted city, Kanpur in northern India, the biggest hospital is so overcrowded with patients with respiratory ailments that they are often bedded in the ophthalmology ward. Kanpur, home to 3 million people, is followed by 13 other Indian cities in a list of the places with the worst air in the…

Events

Working with Vulnerable Populations for Greater Community Resilience

News | April 28, 2023

Working with Vulnerable Populations for Greater Community Resilience

Urban@UW is excited to invite you to attend Working with Vulnerable Populations for Greater Community Resilience, a workshop organized by Urban@UW, the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Put on as part of the NSF-funded MOHERE: Mobility, Health, and Resilience: Building Capacities and Expanding Impact, this workshop will focus…

News | June 18, 2019

World’s population could swell to 10.9 billion by 2100, U.N. report finds

The world’s population could swell to 10.9 billion by the end of the century, a new United Nations analysis found, raising concerns that adding more than 3 billion people to the planet could further deplete natural resources and accelerate global warming. The increase, up from the current count of 7.7 billion people, is expected despite a continued…

Scholar

Xuegang (Jeff) Ban

Scholar

Yinhai Wang

Scholar

Yong-Woo Kim

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…