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.
The Northwest Center’s mission is to enhance the livability of communities in the Pacific Northwest through applied research and outreach in the areas of land use planning, policy, and design; healthy communities; food security; and public participation and democracy.
The Center is a research and policy center focused on issues of environmental and economic sustainability, quality of life, and responsible governance using Washington as a model. Recognizing that the term “livability” has many different definitions and interpretations, the Center’s programs are focused on how the fields of urban planning and design, landscape architecture, and architecture work within this broader context to address livability factors.
The Center operates from the belief that the university should, in cooperation with state agencies, local governments, and community leaders, seek to improve existing social and environmental conditions through research and innovative policy development. It advocates development strategies that focus on smart and efficient land use, strong communities, high-wage, low waste jobs and economic development and public participation and accountability in government.
The Institute for Hazards Mitigation Planning and Research is an interdisciplinary academic institute housed in the College of Built Environments. The Institute is dedicated to exploring ways to enhance Community Resilience, through integration of hazards mitigation principles across all aspects of community development. Its mission is to build a resource center that will enhance risk reduction and resilience activities through research and analysis of hazards, policies related to mitigation, and outreach to the community.
The Institute for Hazards Mitigation Planning and Research is dedicated to integrating hazards mitigation principles into a wide range of crisis, disaster, and risk management opportunities. The Institute provides expertise in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery with a special emphasis on mitigation and planning in the promotion of community sustainability. It is interdisciplinary in focus and structure, and the capabilities of the Institute are enhanced by its close relationship with other academic and research organizations. This incorporates collaboration with several other disciplines within the University of Washington.
The Institute’s faculty and researchers are involved in numerous innovative and path-breaking research initiatives with the ultimate goal of enhancing community capacity to anticipate, respond to, cope with, and recover from natural and man-made hazard events.
The Chandigarh Urban Lab is dedicated to creating a forum to understand the contemporary Indian city in transformation. It is designed to support Indian and international students and scholars of architecture and urbanism interested in studying Chandigarh as a case-study in the above context.
The Lab is an investigation into issues of globalization, urbanization and preservation that are at play in Chandigarh today. Besides infrastructural and logistical support, the Lab offers linkages with local and national architects, academics, activists and citizens.
The Chandigarh Urban Lab is conceived as an ongoing forum on contemporary Indian architecture and urbanism. The Lab invites interested academic and research organizations to engage the Lab, either to simply access our facilities and framework and/or to propose full- fledged collaborations.
The Center for Asian Urbanism was established to promote and undertake interdisciplinary and collaborative research of urban conditions and processes in Asia and the “Global Pacific”, for example, the relevance of cities and city-regions in Asia to each other, to the Pacific Northwest of the U.S., and to the world at large.
The Center integrates research and action-oriented activities in the field to develop new knowledge and inform policy, decision-making and professional development. It provides a platform locally and internationally for critical discussion of urban issues in Asia and beyond.
The Center serves as a platform to explore the intersection of architecture, construction, landscape architecture, and urban design and planning. It is also the goal of the collaborative to establish the University of Washington as a national and international leader in the field of urban research in Asia. The College, together with other units at the University of Washington, including especially the Jackson School of International Studies, the Asian Law Center and the Foster School of Business’s Global Business Center, currently has one of the strongest concentrations of scholars on Asian cities and urbanization in the United States.
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.
The Urban@UW initiative brings together labs that study urban issues from across the University of Washington. Urban@UW works with scholars, policymakers, and community stakeholders in order to strengthen the connection between research and solutions to urban issues through cross-disciplinary and cross-sector collaborative research. Key functions of Urban@UW include amplifying public awareness of ongoing projects, connecting researchers with outside constituencies, providing staff and administrative support services, and providing pilot funding and fundraising assistance. Multiple BE labs are involved, including the Northwest…
Sandy’s career as a landscape architect and community planner has focused on exploring the intersections of art, ecology, landscape design and planning in theory and practice. For nearly 40 years she has advocated for livable communities, and shaped attractive places through design of enduring landscapes and creating spatial and policy plans addressing both conservation and development. She has managed her own successful consulting firms, held senior director positions in local government, and served as design and planning principal in large international and local consulting firms.
Sandy has a diverse and award winning design portfolio of projects including exquisite small gardens in the Pacific Northwest, various mixed use and resort projects in Asia, revitalized downtowns in rural communities in the Rocky Mountain region and embassies and campuses around the globe. Sandy has garnered numerous awards from professional and service organizations including American Society of Landscape Architects, The American Planning Association, the Governor of the State of Washington, The Puget Sound Regional Council and National Association of Environmental Professionals. Her work has been published in Landscape Architecture Magazine, Rural Towns Symposium, Scenic America Best of the West, Geological Society of America and others. Sandy currently serves on two Local Art Committees and two professionals Councils at the University of Washington College of the Built Environment; Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and Design.
She is a former board member of State of Montana Licensing and Air Quality Boards, the State of Michigan Arts Council, Washington Association of Landscape Architects Board of Directors, Council of Landscape Architects Registration Board Examination Committee. After graduating from Michigan State with degrees in Art and Landscape Architecture, Sandy practiced in Ann Arbor and Lansing prior to beginning her migration west by way of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Montana, and Seattle. In 2003 she settled on Bainbridge Island with her husband, a photographer and technologist and their two sons; Dylan and Sean who are both emerging designers of products and technology. Sandy studied at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute; the first program in the US to offer an MBA in Sustainable Business. Intellectually curious and a non-conformist by nature, Sandy is intrigued by cross discipline collaborations. With Richard, she continues and debate and explore the intersections of landscape architecture, horticulture, design, ecology and technology in her practice, community service, research, art, writing and personal garden.
Donald King is an architect, planner and educator with over 50 years of professional experience. He is currently Principal Architect of Mimar Studio, a predevelopment planning and design consultancy. Since 2017, he has been an Affiliate Professor of Architecture in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. He is a co-founder of the Nehemiah Inititaive Seattle.
Laure Heland is Affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture. She has been teaching as an Associate Professor at the National School of Architecture of Paris La Villette (France) since 2007. As research faculty she participated in several national and European public funded research programs on participatory process for sustainable design and the assessment of environmental and climate change policies at regional, local and building scales.
Trained in Ecology, Urban Design and Planning, she developed her professional experience in environmental consulting and training for professionals, local authorities and regional governments. She earned her PhD in 2008, studying the neighborhood as a place for emergence, experimentation and appropriation of sustainable development, through bottom-up ecological practices and community-led participatory design.
Laure’s current research focuses on the Pacific Northwest experience and leadership on stormwater management at different scales, and more generally the social, ecological and economical consequences of implementing ecological infrastructure in dense urban environments. She is analyzing their impact on local communities, on the praxis of design professionals, and the management of ecological systems over the long term through the collaboration of various actors: local communities, NGOs, public and private professionals and agencies.
She also explores community-led ecological design projects and participatory process in various socio-cultural contexts. She is teaching a fall seminar on Perceptions of Nature in dense urban environments and she collaborated with the past two McKinley BE Studios on
interdisciplinary teaching pedagogy.