Climate change, smart cities, urban economics and the interaction between human behavior and built environment
Department: Urban Design and Planning
Yuqi Li
Urban ecology, simulation modeling, scenario planning, enhancing ecosystem functions in coupled human-natural systems
Julie Howe
Housing models and their impact on mental health
Ana Costa
Urban governance, poverty and inequality, planning history and theory, housing policy, urban informality, community organization
Sunho Choi
Historic preservation planning and policy, community development, urban revitalization, social sustainability
Chin-Wei Chen
Climate change (adaptation & mitigation), climate governance, community-based adaptation actions, disaster risk reduction
Mingming Cai
Emerging transportation technologies, shared mobility and land use, interaction between human mobility based on shared vehicles and urban land uses. Spatio-temporal analysis and big data. Smart visualization methods
Lamis Ashour
Research interests: Smart cities and transportation systems, Digital transformation, Travel behavior, and Sustainable development
Abdulaziz Alqadhib
Research interests: Infrastructure Economics and Planning, Energy Infrastructure, and Urban Economics
Urban Design & Planning Interdisciplinary PhD
The Urban Design & Planning Interdisciplinary Ph.D. at the University of Washington is one of 39 Ph.D. programs in urban and regional planning in North America, and one of the oldest, founded in 1967.
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 breadth of this program permits students to pursue doctoral studies in the various aspects of urban design and planning as well as in a number of related social science, natural resource, and engineering areas.
The Program seeks to prepare scholars who can advance the state of research, practice, and education related to the built environment and its relationship to society and nature in metropolitan regions throughout the world. The program provides a strong interdisciplinary educational experience that draws on the resources of the entire University, and on the laboratory provided by the Seattle metropolitan region and the Pacific Northwest. The program emphasizes the educational values of interdisciplinarity, intellectual leadership and integrity, and the social values of equity, democracy and sustainability. It seeks to promote deeper understanding of the ways in which public decisions shape and are shaped by the urban physical, social, economic, and natural environment. The program envisions its graduates becoming leaders in the international community of researchers, practitioners and educators who focus on improving the quality of life and environment in metropolitan regions.