Economy & Finance & Development Archives - Page 12 of 14

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.

Meghan Lewis

Meghan uses her background in architecture, supply chain sustainability, and life cycle assessment to pursue broad, system-wide policies and initiatives that support the vision of carbon neutral, circular building material supply chains. Meghan has been an active contributor at the Carbon Leadership Forum, and played a crucial role as a contributing editor to the Practice Guide for the Life Cycle Assessment of Buildings. She also chairs the Building Focus Group in the CLF Online Community. As a staff member she’ll be responsible for leading policy research to support Buy Clean initiatives.

She was recently the Head of Global Energy and Sustainability at WeWork, where she also launched the supply chain sustainability program in 2018 to drive efforts to source sustainable materials across their global portfolio. Before joining WeWork, Meghan was an architect at Mithun, where she worked on a range of project types and developed office-wide sustainability guidelines as part of the firm’s sustainability team. She also led internal efforts to integrate whole building life cycle assessment and low carbon material selection into the design process, through R+D and implementation on active projects.

Washington Center for Real Estate Research

Established in 1989 through two legislative programs, the WCRER compiles real estate sale transaction data, rental market statistics, and development metrics throughout the State of Washington. From this, the WCRER also develops affordable housing metrics for the state with data published in quarterly Washington State Housing Market Reports, a twice yearly Washington State Apartment Market Report, and the Washington Housing Market Data Toolkit. The WCRER also provides bespoke data driven research, educational outreach programs, and policy guidance to professional organizations consistent with its public service mandate.

The Washington Center for Real Estate Research (WCRER) was initially established by the Board of Regents at Washington State University (WSU) 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 2012. WCRER works with faculty to ensure their rigorous research is accessible and easily usable by industry participants, the media and the general public, regardless of their statistical sophistication.

WCRER aims to provide credible research, value-added information, education services and project-oriented research to real estate licensees, real estate consumers, real estate service providers, institutional customers, public agencies, and communities in Washington state and the Pacific Northwest region.

The Washington Center for Real Estate Research is a key provider of real estate research and data across the State of Washington. The Center is primarily funded by the State, hence its central role in the provision of quality and robust data and market reports. Among its core activities are the Quarterly Washington State Housing Market Report and the semi-annual Apartment Market Survey for the State Department of Licensing.

The Center is active across a range of other research projects and works closely with stakeholders both across the University of Washington with the public and private sectors.

Urban Infrastructure Lab

The Urban Infrastructure Lab (UIL) at the University of Washington brings together students and faculty with a shared interest in the planning, governance, finance, design, development, economics, and environmental effects of infrastructure. Collectively, our interests span the systems critical to economic and social well-being, such as energy, water, health, transportation, education, and communications. Across these sectors, our studies integrate empirical and applied methods of research to discover the means to obtain long-run objectives, such as decarbonization, resilience, and information security, through decisions made today.

Urban Ecology Research Lab

The Urban Ecology Research Laboratory (UERL) is an interdisciplinary team of University of Washington researchers and Ph.D. students studying cities as urban ecosystems. The lab studies urban landscapes as hybrid phenomena that emerge from the interactions between human and ecological processes, and the interactions between urban development and ecosystem dynamics.

As part of the University of Washington’s innovative leadership in urban ecology research and education, the UERL transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries to address some of society’s most challenging problems. UERL research interests include: complexity and resilience in coupled natural and human systems, urban landscape patterns and ecosystem function, urban ecosystem management, modeling land cover change, adaptation and scenario planning. The UERL assists planners, decision makers and non-governmental organizations in making informed decisions about urban development in a rapidly changing environment.

The Urban Ecology Research Laboratory is directed by Professor Marina Alberti, and includes interdisciplinary PhD students, post-doctoral research associates, research scientists, and affiliate faculty from diverse disciplines who collaborate to study coupled natural and human systems.

Urban Commons Lab

Urban Commons Lab in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington focuses on research and public service that contribute to civic engagement and democratization of contemporary city-making. The Lab approaches Urban Commons as a spatial and social practice that embodies sharing, reciprocity, inclusion, civic engagement, and collective actions. Through research, and community design projects as well as events and publications, it seeks to engage the public and the scholarly/professional community in advancing the understanding and making of urban commons.

Locally, the Lab’s primary focus has been on working with immigrant communities in King County. Specifically, the projects have engaged underserved communities including Seattle’s Chinatown-International District in collaboration with community organizations with support from Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods and other funding sources. Through research and teaching collaboration, the Urban Commons Lab is also part of a network of community design scholars and practitioners in the Pacific Rim.

Urban Commons Lab has led and participated in projects funded by the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, National Endowment for the Arts, Landscape Architecture Foundation, Worldwide Universities Network, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the UW Office of Global Affairs, and other organizations.

David Blum

Edward David Blum has spent more than 40 years as a planner in both the public and private sectors. In the public sector, he has worked for state and county governments, Native American tribes and non-profit organizations. His work experience in the private sector includes managing the development of various commercial, residential, industrial, retail and marina projects throughout the United States. Mr. Blum has taught classroom and studio courses in New Jersey, Oregon and Washington with a focus on land use planning, affordable housing, economic development and sustainable urban mobility.

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.

Arthur Acolin

Arthur Acolin is an Assistant Professor and Bob Filley Endowed Chair in the Runstad Department of Real Estate in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. He obtained his Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Development from the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California in May 2017. His dissertation, titled “Three Essays on Frictions in Housing Markets” looked at various market imperfections that affect household housing choices and impact their financial outcomes. His field of research is housing economics with a focus on international housing policy and finance. His particular interest is on how housing market institutions and market designs affect household access to housing (tenure choice, housing consumption and mobility decision). Prior to completing his Ph.D. Acolin was a Research Associate in the Real Estate department of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he worked on housing, urbanization and economic development issues. He obtained a master in Urban Policy from the London School of Economics and Sciences Po Paris and an undergraduate degree in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.