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…
Lab/Center: Urban@UW
Urban@UW Publishes Report on the Lessons and Levers for University Collaborations with Governmental and Community Partners
Jennifer Davison, Director of Urban@UW & Assistant Dean for Research of the College of Built Environments here at UW, and Thaïsa Way, Founding Director of Urban@UW, current Director of Garden & Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, Harvard University, and Professor in UW’s Department of Landscape Architecture, have published a report titled, Lessons and Levers for University Collaborations with Governmental and Community Partners: A Synthesis of the Bullit Foundation’s Thought Leadership and Innovation RFP. This report, developed…
Sensol Systems to participate in the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps program
Sensol Systems, a startup founded in 2020 by Janie Bube–a recent UW Masters of Landscape Architecture graduate–along with other students at University of Washington, was recently awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) award to participate in the I-Corps program. This NSF program uses experiential education to help researchers gain valuable insight into entrepreneurship, starting a business or industry requirements and challenges. The curriculum integrates scientific inquiry and industrial discovery in an inclusive, data-driven culture driven by rigor, relevance, and evidence….
Jen Davison
Jen Davison (she/her) is the Project Director of Community Engagement for University Initiatives, leading efforts to increase and improve institutional capacity for community engagement across the UW. Until last fall, for 8 years Jen was director of Urban@UW, a UW-wide initiative that fosters cross-disciplinary and community engaged research to address urban challenges. She continues to serve as the Co-Director of Urban@UW’s Research to Action Collaboratory, an accelerator program for community-engaged research partnerships.
Davison has been building boundary-spanning infrastructure within higher education for over a decade. She joined University of Washington’s College of the Environment in 2010 and founded its science communication program, which provides opportunities, training, and support for college researchers to connect their research to non-science communities through communication, outreach and engagement. Davison joined Urban@UW in 2015, and co-led strategies and programs to address complex challenges such as housing and homelessness; urban environmental justice; and equitable smart cities. She was the founding program manager for Livable City Year in 2016, which connects faculty and students with municipal governments for collaborative projects. From 2017-2019 she co-chaired UW-Seattle’s Carnegie Classification Working Group, charged to assess the campus’ support for community engagement at all levels, from curricular programs to faculty incentive structures to fundraising processes and beyond. In 2020 Davison served as the foundational program manager for the College of Built Environments’ Applied Research Consortium, connecting faculty and students with industrial partners for collaborative research. From 2021-2022 she was the College of Built Environments’ Director of Research, charged to foster a culture of research productivity, collaboration, and engagement throughout the college.
In 2017 Davison participated in the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Community Engagement Fellowship; participated in UW’s Leadership Excellence Project in 2018; and was a Leadership Tomorrow Fellow in 2019. From 2018-2023 she served on the Board of Directors for the UW Professional Staff Organization, including as the Vice President and as the chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. Previous to her role at University of Washington, as a published scientist Davison worked with community partners to understand how wildlife and landscapes are responding to land use and climate change, and to co-develop tools for managing ecosystems threatened by these drivers.
CBE Office of Research Updates
On September 5, Dean Renée Cheng shared exciting updates about the College of Built Environments’ Office of Research. Read below for more from Dean Cheng: The College of Built Environments’ newly revamped Office of Research aims to elevate CBE research expertise in community engagement, climate action, housing, humanities, and technology and to increase capacity for meeting urgent needs for this research to be accessible and have impact. While there is much work to be done, I believe the steps outlined…
Sound Communities
Sound Communities envisions a Puget Sound region where all of us live in vibrant, thriving communities with access to public transit and amenities, giving us the freedom to make our best lives for ourselves and our families. Our mission is to promote the development of complete, walkable, equitable and inclusive neighborhoods at scale across the Puget Sound region in concert with the region’s historic investment in transit.
Primary goals:
- Encourage, support, and enable cities and counties to create and update station area plans based on community vision to achieve complete communities based on equitable transit-oriented development
- Provide cities and counties with the capability to acquire, assemble, lease, or landbank land within and adjacent to station areas to be developed into affordable and mixed-income housing
- Provide cities and counties with the means to partner with the development community to produce affordable and mixed-income housing and related infrastructure
CBE Spotlight: Rachel Berney
Rachel Berney is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture, an Urban@UW Fellow, and author of Learning from Bogotá: Pedagogical Urbanism and the Reshaping of Public Space. Her primary interests include community sustainable design, public space, and international development in the Americas, as well as urban design and planning history and theory with an emphasis on social and cultural factors. Urban@UW sat down with her in 2019 to discuss her work and research…
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.
A partnership between the Office of Research and the College of Built Environments, and engaging colleges, schools, and departments across all three of University of Washington’s campuses, Urban@UW amplifies UW as a leading university in urban issues. Together, we catalyze the evolution of Seattle as a model city—a boundary-pushing laboratory and knowledge hub that leverages innovation to create a place of opportunity and health for all—and build new ideas that can be used in metropolitan regions around the globe. Urban@UW leverages deep understanding, leading-edge analysis, and an ethos of partnership to create the pathway for Seattle as the city of the future.
Urban@UW works with scholars, policymakers, and community stakeholders to develop cross-disciplinary and cross-sector collaborative research. We aim to strengthen connections between research and solutions to today’s urban challenges. We do this through intellectual partnership, drawing upon the many scholars and centers on campus to cultivate new, path-breaking ideas, projects, and research-practice collaborations.
Urban@UW is a large network of scholars and practitioners with leaders and supporters engaging in different projects and initiatives across all three campuses. Supported by the Office of Research and the College of Built Environments as well as external grants and partnerships, the Urban@UW institution-wide community includes our Executive Committee, Urban@UW Fellows, and Urban@UW Affiliates.
Gregg Colburn
Gregg Colburn is an associate professor in the Runstad Department of Real Estate in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. He publishes research on topics related to housing and homelessness and is co-author of the book, Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns (University of California Press). His research has been featured in leading media outlets, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Economist, Bloomberg, and National Public Radio.
Gregg holds a B.A. from Albion College, an M.B.A. from Northwestern University, and a M.S.W. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Prior to academia, he worked as an investment banker and private equity professional. At the University of Washington, Gregg teaches classes in housing, urban economics, and finance. Gregg serves as co-chair of the University of Washington’s Homelessness Research Initiative and is a member of the National Alliance to End Homelessness Research Council.
Rebecca J. Walter
Rebecca J. Walter is an Associate Professor and Windermere Endowed Chair in the Runstad Department of Real Estate in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. Dr. Walter’s research is focused on policy innovation in low-income housing. She emphasizes a spatial analytical approach to examine how housing policies either expand opportunity or perpetuate inequality for low-income households. Most of her work is applied as it involves direct engagement with public housing authorities and non-profit housing providers. Dr. Walter also collaborates with criminologists to study spatial-temporal crime patterns across various types of land uses, housing developments, and commercial real estate. She examines real estate and urban planning variables (e.g., private investment, community and economic development initiatives, vacant lots, business activity) and changes in crime over time at the micro-scale (properties and street segments) to help inform policies that support the greatest crime reduction benefits.