May 5, 2021

Living Landscapes Incubator receives research funding

Living Landscapes Incubator is a recently awarded project led by School of Environmental and Forest Sciences‘ Joshua Lawler along with Co-Principal Investigators Dan Brown (Director, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences), Jen Davison (Director, Urban@UW, Assistant Dean of Research, College of Built Environments), Ken Yocom (Chair, Landscape Architecture; Interim Faculty Director, Urban@UW), and Mike Yost (Chair, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences).

In the last year, the global pandemic and the restrictions that have followed have shown how important community and connections between people and access to green and vibrant outdoor spaces are to our mental and physical health. The recent amplifications of ongoing racial injustice have revealed how divided we are as a society. Finally, climate change and the resulting fires in our region have shown how closely our well-being is tied to the management of our natural systems. This project aims to address these challenges.

The main three objectives of this project are to:

1. Identify and support new initiatives that would frame visions of a sustainable, livable, equitable, and just Pacific Northwest.
2. Launch new collaborations, projects, and programs that integrate expertise in urban environmental science, health, and design (specifically collaborations across the College of Built Environments, the College of the Environment, and the School of Public Health).
3. Contribute to the re-envisioning of the Center for Urban Horticulture as a place for cross-campus and community-engaged collaborations and innovative work on the intersection of built and natural environments and human and environmental health.