“France and Georgia Tech share a long history of collaboration and friendship, and we count the French Republic as dear friends and vital partners in our mission,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera. “Together, we’ve built a robust transatlantic bridge that connects our cities and nations in support of education, diplomacy, and research, and I look forward to a 14th year of showing the world what our powerful partnership has accomplished and the promise it continues to hold for the future.”
Friday, Sept. 29
6 p.m.
A screening of the short film series Lost in Traplanta, about the quest of a young Frenchman to reunite the famous rap duo Andre 3000 and Big Boi, known as Outkast, and his discovery of the Atlanta hip-hop scene. The screening will be followed by a discussion with filmmaker Mathieu Rochet; Dr. Dax, member of the Dungeon Family and cultural advisor on Lost in Traplanta; and Joycelyn Wilson, professor of hip-hop studies at Georgia Tech.
Saturday, Oct. 14
10:40 a.m.
Starting from the notion of “terrestrial cities,” this series of talks invites experts from Marseille and Atlanta to share initiatives and strategies with the public. In partnership with Ellen Bassett, John Portman Chair and Dean of the College of Design, and Julie Kim, William H. Harrison Chair of the School of Architecture, this event features a conversation with Christina Shivers, 2023 Ventulett NEXT Fellow in the School of Architecture, and French-English architect Andrew Todd.
Friday, Oct. 20
10:30 a.m.
This panel discussion will delve into the key aspects of building sustainable smart cities. Panelists of researchers, corporate executives, and ecosystem builders will explore innovative logistics partnerships, the role of sustainable mobility, and the importance of fostering bilateral collaboration in research and innovation between France and Georgia.
Monday, Oct. 23
12:30 p.m.
A conversation with Stephanie Boulard from the School of Modern Languages and Senegalese author Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, 2021 winner of the Prix Goncourt for his novel La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (The Most Secret Memory of Men).
Several Georgia Tech departments will sponsor seminars and workshops. Learn more and view a full schedule of events at france-atlanta.org.
]]>Institute Communications
]]>Each week, students will hear from a guest speaker who will discuss how their work in urban policy has advanced our collective progress on these critical issues. Guest speakers will include former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin; current Augusta Mayor and Georgia Tech graduate Hardie Davis, EE 92; Kamau Franklin, founder of Community Movement Builders; and Egbert Perry, chairman and CEO of Integral, a holistic urban redevelopment company.
Students will get the chance to emulate these guest speakers and put their new policymaking skills to the test, given that a central goal of the class is to train students on the “nuts and bolts” of policymaking in today’s urban environment. Students will spend the semester facing off against a problem that a real city mayor might face and, working in teams, play the roles of their policy advisors.
Guest lecturer David Edwards and Becky Rafter, a Ph.D. student in the School of Public Policy, will co-teach the class. Edwards served as the senior policy advisor to Franklin during her two terms as mayor. He is also the former CEO of Purpose Built Communities, a national nonprofit focused on urban revitalization. Rafter is the former executive director at Georgia WAND, a nonprofit focused on redirecting public funds to advance racial, environmental, and energy justice, as well as nuclear harm reduction in Georgia.
“The rapid revitalization of our cities over the past several decades has created an opportunity to address the legacy of the unjust public policies of the past,” Edwards said. “However, we have not yet broadly adopted the strategies and policies we need to address them successfully. My hope is that this class will focus on discussing what those policies might be and how we might apply them in our cities moving forward.”
“Systemic racial-, gender-, and geographic discrimination is often baked into the cake of public policies,” added Rafter. “We’re looking forward to hearing from experts who have made significant contributions in addressing these issues at the local level.”
Edwards and Rafter hope that this class provides students with the opportunity to grow into innovative and ethical leaders who can effectively define urban problems and develop practical solutions.
PUBP 4211/PUBP 6606: Urban Policy will be taught on Fridays from 8-10:45 a.m. Phase I registration begins Monday, Nov. 8.
]]>Communications Officer
School of Public Policy | Sam Nunn School of International Affairs
]]>“The municipalities of Southern California illustrate that metropolitan areas indeed can experience a positive spillover effect of urban climate policies through diffusions among localities bordering one another,” they wrote.
]]>Communications Officer
School of Public Policy | Sam Nunn School of International Affairs
]]>On April 19th, the Georgia Tech Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems (CHHS) brought together faculty across campus to present new research and technology relating to resilience, social impact, public health, international development, and other topics.
Professors Catherine Ross, Margaret Wagner Dahl, and Ellen Zegura shared research, information on new project-based courses, and internships taking place at the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development, Computing for Good (C4G) at the College of Computing, the Serve Learn Sustain Initiative (SLS), Data Science for Social Good, and the Enterprise Innovation Institute (Ei2), as well as related partnerships with local and federal government and organizations around the world.
Dr. Catherine Ross (http://catherine.ross.gatech.edu/)
Catherine L. Ross is the Harry West Professor and Director of Georgia Institute of Technology’s Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development and Deputy Director of the National Transportation Center for Productivity and Management. She is an internationally respected researcher and speaker on issues of land use, transportation planning, health impact assessment (HIA), and quality growth. She is a member of the National Academy of Public Administration. Her last two books are Megaregions Planning for Global Competitiveness, Island Press 2009, and Health Impact Assessment in the United States, Springer 2014. In 2009, Dr. Ross was selected to advise the Obama Administration on the first‐ever White House Office of Urban Affairs. She earned a BA degree from Kent State University followed by a Master's Degree and Doctorate from Cornell University in Regional Planning. She completed post-doctorate work at the University of California, Berkeley.
Margaret Wagner Dahl (http://www.ti.gatech.edu/about/people/margaret-dahl)
Margaret Wagner Dahl is the Associate Vice President (AVP) for Health IT Extension Services. She works specifically with health care providers and the health IT industry by making Georgia Tech’s interoperability and integration resources accessible, as well as startup company technology validation and workforce training programs. Most recently, Dahl was AVP for Economic Development at the University of Georgia (UGA) and Director of the Georgia BioBusiness Center, a biotechnology business incubator tied closely to interdisciplinary research at UGA. Before UGA, she was Director of Operations at the Austin Technology Incubator, The University of Texas at Austin (U.T.). Prior to U.T. Austin, she was Director of Licensing at the University of Washington’s Office of Technology Transfer and previously co-founded two successful startup companies. Dahl has a Bachelor’s in Sociology and Geography from the National University of Ireland-Maynooth in County Kildare, Ireland. She currently serves as Trustee for the American Hospital Association’s Council on Governance, Trustee for the Georgia Hospital Association and Vice Chair for Athens Regional Health System.
Dr. Ellen Zegura (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Ellen.Zegura)
Professor Zegura currently chairs the School of Computer Science in the College of Computing. Dr. Zegura began the Compute for Good (C4G) initiative to leverage computing to study and address pressing societal problems. The C4G vision is that computing and related disciplines can play a critical role in addressing systemic societal problems, and that tackling such problems can push the intellectual boundaries of the disciplines. One realization of C4G is a project-based senior/graduate class. Dr. Zegura’s research interests include the development of wide-area (Internet) networking services and mobile wireless networking, such as those utilized by applications distributed across multiple administrative domains (e.g., web, file sharing, multi-media distribution). She is currently working on projects in these areas funded by DARPA and NSF as well as the “Internet for Everyone Really (IFER)” project to design “a future Internet architecture for all 6 Billion of the world’s people, starting from considerations of the 3 Billion not currently reached by the Internet.” Dr. Zegura has been a faculty of Georgia Tech since 1993. She received a B.S. degree in Computer Science and in Electrical Engineering (1987), an M.S. degree in Computer Science (1990), and a D.Sc. in Computer Science (1993) all from Washington University, St. Louis.
Wed, April 19th, 2017, 3pm – 6pm, East Architecture Building, Auditorium (Classroom 123) (Building 76 on map) *Detailed instructions below. Please RSVP online here (Event is free, light refreshments will be provided).
]]>Urban Systems Design analyzes the ways in which society utilizes Internet of Things-based sharing platforms in the context of smart community dimensions—energy, transport, urban form, and human comfort—and explores how these platforms can be used to improve community health and welfare.
With recent achievements in research regarding the potential impact of Internet of Things and big data, Urban Systems Design delves into how to identify, structure, measure, and monitor urban sustainability standards and progress. This book reviews the financial, institutional, policy, and technical needs required for a successful implementation in smart cities.
“Urban design is becoming data-driven. Empowered by new tools and technologies, cities are now far more designable than ever before. Ability to handle how massive data are captured, analyzed and applied in cities is now critical to addressing problems occurring in places, neighborhoods and cities. Urban systems design offers an approach to designing new forms of sustainable, resilient and socially responsible cities, in the face of increasing impact of emerging technologies, big data and urban automation to people, communities and their placemaking,” said Professor Yang.
Click here to learn more about Urban Systems Design.
]]>Urban Systems Design analyzes the ways in which society utilizes Internet of Things-based sharing platforms in the context of smart community dimensions—energy, transport, urban form, and human comfort—and explores how these platforms can be used to improve community health and welfare.
With recent achievements in research regarding the potential impact of Internet of Things and big data, Urban Systems Design delves into how to identify, structure, measure, and monitor urban sustainability standards and progress. This book reviews the financial, institutional, policy, and technical needs required for a successful implementation in smart cities.
“Urban design is becoming data-driven. Empowered by new tools and technologies, cities are now far more designable than ever before. The ability to handle how massive data are captured, analyzed, and applied in cities is now critical to addressing problems occurring in places, neighborhoods, and cities. Urban systems design offers an approach to designing new forms of sustainable, resilient, and socially responsible cities in the face of increasing impact of emerging technologies, big data, and urban automation to people, communities, and their placemaking,” said Professor Yang.
Click here to learn more about Urban Systems Design.
]]>Under the OPT (Optional Practical Training) program, international students who graduate from colleges and universities in the United States are able to remain in the country and receive training through work experience for up to 12 months. Students who graduate from a designated STEM degree program can remain for an additional 24 months on the F-1 STEM OPT extension.
“This designation helps capture the value of the integration of so many different technological, social, and ecological aspects of our urban design program,” said Ellen Dunham-Jones, director of the MSUD program.
Georgia Tech has been a leader in urban design education since 1969. In addition to the MSUD, housed in the School of Architecture, students can specialize in urban design in the Master of City and Regional Planning (MCRP) degree or can pursue the M.Arch/MCRP dual degree. All three emphasize a culture of collaboration linking requisite knowledge and expertise across fields of architecture, planning, landscape, and engineering to propose integrated and implementable solutions to the design of urban areas.
The MSUD is the most studio-centric of the three programs with a specific focus on preparing students to produce detailed drawings integrating the design of public infrastructure, public spaces and the subdivision of private land. The MSUD is also distinguished by its exclusive focus on redeveloping our least sustainable areas into more resilient, more equitable, and more prosperous places.
We invite you to Watch the 2019 MSUD Virtual Open House. Applications are open now and the deadline to apply is January 15, 2019.
]]>In anticipation of season three of the hit Netflix series Stranger Things, which is poised to emphasize the mall culture of the 1980s, Dreyfuss reached out to Dunham-Jones, an expert in dying malls and how to retrofit them for future use.
Dunham-Jones is the co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, which explores retrofits of aging big box stores, malls, and office parks as they provide healthier and more sustainable places for their communities.
“Newspapers like to jump to the headline that it’s online shopping, but that’s more like the nail in the coffin, than it really is the beginning. The decline of the malls really starts in the 90s mostly because we built so many of them that they started to cannibalize each other.” Dunham-Jones says about the decline of shopping malls. However, Dunham-Jones says that she is most interested in when people are looking at the death of these properties as opportunities to help a 20th century suburb address 21st century problems.
Watch Dunham-Jones’ interview with WIRED here.
]]>SimAUD is a highly selective annual conference supported by the Society for Modeling & Simulation International (SCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The conference returns to the United States this year for its 10-year anniversary. Previously, the conference was held in Delft, the Netherlands (2018), Toronto, Canada (2017) and London, United Kingdom (2016). Georgia Tech was selected this year because of the College of Design’s leadership in scholarship and education in design technology. The conference is organized by the Georgia Tech School of Architecture.
This year the program includes four keynote presentations, 11 sessions that showcase 40 single-track, peer-reviewed publications, 8 pre-conference workshops, two professional panels and engaging social events at Georgia Tech and in Atlanta. The conference will also feature a symposium-wide simulation game that will engage participants throughout the three days.
“SimAUD 2019 is going to be a universal celebration of a phenomenal international community of simulation scholars, coming together to discuss state-of-the-art design technology in a truly convergent format,” says SimAUD2019 Program Chair, Tarek Rakha, assistant professor of architecture and high performance buildings in the School of Architecture. “Georgia Tech is both thrilled and honored to host and develop the program for the decennial celebration of this event coming back to the United States, where 12 faculty across Tech’s campus will serve as session chairs and moderators, focusing on a variety of topics ranging from climate modeling to the simulation of people in the built environment. We look forward to welcoming colleagues from all around the world who will disseminate their latest advances in research and innovations for better built environment futures through the lenses of design technology”
“Contemporary architecture practice continuously develops a common digital language to integrate building industry frameworks.” says Scott Marble, Chair of Georgia Tech School of Architecture. “SimAUD 2019 will present critical topics being explored in top academic research centers and architectural practices from around the world. Design technologies have great potential to transform practice in new and innovative ways and through events like this, impactful international synergies are sure to be built to advance this transformation.
“Georgia Tech’s College of Design sets an ideal stage for the 10-year anniversary of SimAUD, leveraging Tech’s technological synergies, along with the College’s strengths in design, planning and creativity.” says Nancey Green Leigh, College of Design Associate Dean of Research. “By bringing together remarkable and established researchers and practitioners in urban planning and design, architecture and building science, visualization and construction, as well as software development, SimAUD 2019, offers promising opportunities for collaboration, innovation and entrepreneurship that to advance Tech’s research agenda.”
“The faculty and students at the Georgia Tech College of Design focus on integrating design and technology. We have developed advanced simulation and visualization models at the building, neighborhood, and city-scale,” said College of Design Dean Stephen P. French. “We are thrilled to host SimAUD and look forward to working with you to push the boundaries of simulation research. Welcome to Georgia Tech!”
The conference runs from Sunday, April 7 through Tuesday, April 9. All sessions are scheduled to take place in the John and Joyce Caddell Building’s Flex Space. The conference offers a platform to unite researchers and practitioners in the fields of architecture, urban design, urban planning, building science, and data science. SimAUD 2019 will feature a range of topics related to simulation with a special emphasis on methods that bridge disciplinary gaps between design, construction, operations, resource management, human behavior, and performance analytics across building and urban scales.
Follow this link to register for SimAUD 2019.
About the Georgia Tech School of Architecture
Georgia Tech School of Architecture’s mission is to instill students with a life-long curiosity for the social and cultural meaning of the built environment and a passion to be part of improving the future. The School offers six distinct degree programs that each address the wide spectrum of design, technology, and social and cultural components of the architecture profession. The programs include a Bachelor of Science in Architecture, Master of Architecture, a Master of Science in Architecture, a Master of Science in Urban Design, a dual Master of Architecture and Master of City and Regional Planning, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture.
About Georgia Tech
The Georgia Institute of Technology, also known as Georgia Tech, is a top-ranked public university and one of the leading research institutions in the U.S.A. Georgia Tech provides a technologically focused education to more than 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students in fields ranging from engineering, computing, and sciences, to business, design, and liberal arts.
]]>This year, the competition enters its 17th year. According to the ULI competition website, "The ULI Hines Student Competition is part of the [Urban Land] Institute’s ongoing effort to raise interest among young people in creating better communities, improving development patterns, and increasing awareness of the need for multidisciplinary solutions to development and design challenges."
Seven teams from Georgia Tech entered this year's competition. Each team must have five graduate students from at least three different disciplines to be eligible to compete.
The assignment for this year's competition explored the redevelopment of a site in Cincinnati comprising portions of a highway, the central business district, and the central riverfront along the Ohio River. Student groups took a deep dive into the potential to bridge the highway and combine it with adjacent properties, ultimately to connect both areas to create a sustainable, pedestrian-focused, mixed-use neighborhood.
The competition, which kicked off on January 14, is designed to simulate a real world design, planning, and development project. This year's assignment focused on Cincinnati’s vision for connecting the central riverfront entertainment district.
The Georgia Tech team selected as an honorable mention submitted a project titled, "Looping the Banks." Conner Smith, Master of Architecture student, served as team leader for Looping the Banks. Also on the team were Master of Architecture student, Wanli Gao, Master of Real Estate Development student, Bryan Katz, and Master of Science in Urban Design students, Jingxin Xu and Siqi Li. School of Architecture professor and director of the Urban Design program, Ellen Dunham-Jones, and School of Architecture professor of the practice, Brian Bell were faculty advisors for this team. Director of the Master of Real Estate Development for the School of Building Construction, Rick Porter, and associate principal at Perkins+Will, Atlanta, Cassie Branum were professional advisors for Looping the Banks.
According to the group's project proposal, Looping the Banks aims to complete, "a vibrant loop around the Banks riverfront park" while also, "forming a connection between the Central Business District and the Ohio River."
“I’m really proud of them," Dunham-Jones said. "I love seeing the students work together and produce so much work with people they’ve never really met before. It’s extraordinary, really.”
The work from all seven teams is currently on exhibition in the Cohen Gallery located on the second floor of the College of Design’s Architecture East Building.
Click here for the ULI Hines Competition press release.
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The series titled, “REDESIGNING CITIES: The Speedwell Foundation Talks @ Georgia Tech” will devote an evening to each of the topics of equity, social capital, climate change, out-of-date infrastructure, technological disruption, and urban economics. The evening’s program will feature both a presentation and a public conversation between two top experts on that topic. Subjects will range from the impact of autonomous vehicles on cities, gentrification without displacement, and green vs grey infrastructure’s capacity to adapt to climate change, just to name a few.
Organizing and leading this series is Ellen Dunham-Jones, professor and director of Georgia Tech’s Master of Science in Urban Design degree. Dunham-Jones was recently recognized as Architectural Record’s Women Educator of 2018 award and in 2017, Dunham-Jones was ranked among Planetizen’s Top 100 Most Influential Urbanists. Dunham-Jones will oversee the production of videos and podcasts from the series for broad impact.
Messner and his wife, Jenny Messner, created the Speedwell Foundation, an organization focused on restoring and expanding public parks and green spaces in cities around the U.S. Their foundation also helps fund up to 30 study abroad scholarships each year for high school students from central Pennsylvania.
“As a top tier university in the dynamic city of Atlanta, there’s no place better than Georgia Tech to bring together leading minds to work on the biggest challenges facing cities," said Messner. “Jenny and I are thrilled that our family foundation can support this lecture series and the dissemination of the results to the larger public and decisionmakers.”
The School of Architecture plans to host six talks during the 2018-2019 academic year. To stay up-to-date on the upcoming lecture series, please complete this form https://arch.gatech.edu/redesigning-cities-speedwell-foundation-talks-georgia-tech to join our mailing list.
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The MetroLab Network will provide the opportunity to share successes, address challenges, and build shared platforms for experimentation and data between cities and universities necessary to increase the tangible results of new innovations.
“For years, various disciplines within Georgia Tech have helped cities throughout the state to develop potential solutions to infrastructure challenges,” said Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud” Peterson. “For example, our Center for Urban Innovation supports interdisciplinary research on urban sustainability and partners with other groups. The Metro Lab Network allows us to take this work to a new level as we collaborate and leverage expertise in the smart cities effort,” he said.
The MetroLab Network is based on previous successes of technologies developed from established city/university partnerships. These partnerships have produced innovative transportation and water infrastructure projects that have increased the efficiency and reduced the environmental impact of infrastructure systems.
“The City of Atlanta is proud to participate in the MetroLab Network,” said Mayor Kasim Reed. “We look forward to leveraging this opportunity to take advantage of our strong university talent base and their extensive experience in technology, engineering and computer science to develop innovative solutions to some of our most pressing infrastructure and service challenges.”
“As an urban research university, Georgia State is deeply entrenched in Atlanta’s success and in the success of cities around the world,” said Georgia State President Mark Becker. “We welcome the opportunity to work closely with the City of Atlanta and Georgia Tech to find creative solutions to critical societal issues.”
By becoming partners of the network, Georgia Tech will partner with the city and colleagues at Georgia State to collaborate on smart solutions to challenges, not only in Atlanta, but throughout the cities that have partnered in the MetroLab Network.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has provided $1 million in support of the start of the MetroLab Network. MacArthur’s grant is one of severak investments by the foundation in efforts to use data and information technologies to better understand how cities work and to improve the urban condition.
More information on the MetroLab Network and its founding partners can be found at http://metrolabnetwork.heinz.cmu.edu/.
]]>Shuidong Bay New Town is located on the Nanhai Peninsula, within the City of Maoming, an energy hub of southern China. Decades of petrochemical manufacturing and oil refining have left Old Town Maoming facing significant environmental and public health concerns, igniting protests and social unrest. The government of Maoming is hoping to develop the Shuidong Bay New Town into a sustainable, livable eco-city that will attract residents from the old town, as well as domestic and international tourists. Currently, the Nanhai Peninsula houses 36,000 residents, most of whom reside in local villages and sustain their households through a mix of agricultural activities, the fishing industry, small-scale manufacturing, and port activities related to the petrochemical industry. The peninsula is facing challenges balancing industrial development, the ecological needs of the greater bay area, and the tourism-focused vision it holds for the future.
While in China, the Georgia Tech students and professors presented ideas, based on prior research as well as information gathered from the site investigations made over the course of the prior week. The students presented plans to integrate the local villages into future eco-tourisms, advocating for incremental improvement of the infrastructure and renewable energy and water systems for the villages. Additionally, students proposed restoration strategies for the mangroves at the bayfront and the sand dunes at the beach to allow the ecological systems to return to their natural functions. Ideas were also proposed to expand the economy beyond the port and tourism industries toward economic activities that would allow the skill sets of the villagers to be leveraged by creating green jobs.
The experience of visiting the peninsula, seeing the site conditions, meeting with local officials, and interacting with local villagers greatly enriched the students’ understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the Shuidong Bay New Town. Upon their return to the U.S., the students continued to develop their ideas and plans, presenting them publicly to a jury composed of local planning professionals with prior experience in the region. Georgia Tech representatives presented the final report of the international waterfront studio to the Shuidong Bay New Town government and the Guangdong Urban and Rural Planning and Design Institute and on June 20 and 21 at the final meeting in Guangzhou, China. For more information, visit the studio group’s website: http://waterfrontcities.wordpress.com.
]]>CQGRD is currently accepting applications for a research scientist position. The successful candidate will work with an established research team to conduct research in accordance with the Center's Strategic planning areas, including transportation and infrastructure, healthy places, land development and regional governance, air quality and natural environment, and community design and architecture. In addition to conducting research on quality growth and related issues, the position requires the ability to write successful grant proposals, technical reports, and manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals, and provide management and project oversight.
Please click here to visit the official job site for more information and to apply.
]]>The competition, which is in its 12th year, offers graduate students the opportunity to form multidisciplinary teams and engage in a challenging exercise in responsible land use. From over 150 entries, only four finalist teams are chosen. This year, those teams will compete in Nashville, Tennessee, presenting their proposals for redevelopment of the city’s historic Sulphur Dell neighborhood.
“This is a fantastic honor and opportunity for our team,” said Ellen Dunham-Jones, professor, coordinator of the masters in urban design program, and faculty advisor to the team. “This competition is the premier urban design competition of its kind. It’s a terrific learning experience – forcing the designers to think more like developers and vice versa, but it is also extraordinarily competitive. It will push them to be at the top of their game, but will make a lasting impact on their professional lives. It’s great to see the interdisciplinary collaboration – amongst the students as well as all of the faculty, alumni, and local professionals who assisted during the initial two-week phase. We are all 100% behind them.”
Audrey Plummer, team leader on the project, said, “The ULI competition is an intense experience, because we have to produce high-quality work in a very short time frame. Working effectively in an interdisciplinary team is essential to producing a great project. Being a finalist is very exciting and our team is proud to represent Georgia Tech and the College of Architecture.”
The teams will send a representative to do a site visit in March, then will have two weeks to finalize their proposals. The final presentations are slated for April 3 in Nashville.
The ULI Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition is part of the Institute’s ongoing effort to raise interest among young people in creating better communities, improving development patterns, and increasing awareness of the need for multidisciplinary solutions to development and design challenges. Teams must be comprised of students from at least three disciplines, working to devise a comprehensive design and development program for a real, large-scale site full of challenges and opportunities. Submissions must include drawings, site plans, tables, and market-feasible financial data for the designated site.
For more information about the competition and to see the team’s proposal, visit http://uli.org/programs/awards-competitions/hines-student-design-competition/.
]]>Director of Communications
College of Architecture
404-385-0693
]]>Director of Communications
College of Architecture
404-385-0693
]]>The group met with the city’s Deputy Mayor and representatives from the Taiwan Port Authority and local Bureaus of Urban Development and Economic Development. The land around Kaohsiung’s port was previously owned by the Port Authority and used exclusively for heavy industry and shipping. This activity has increasingly moved away from the historic waterfront piers as Kaohsiung has become one of the largest container ports in the world. The city government is now engaged in plans and projects to redevelop hundreds of acres of contaminated land along the waterfront.
Local government officials presented their high profile and innovative design waterfront projects which included a pop music center, passenger cruise ship terminal, convention center, and library. The visiting Georgia Tech students and professors presented ideas on the use of urban Free Economic Zones, areas of deregulated economic activity created to promote foreign direct investment and boost job growth. Additionally, they discussed fostering urban redevelopment with international educational institutions as anchors, utilizing urban design to create waterfront accessibility for a wide range of users, and revising zoning regulations to allow a mix of residential and economic activity for a vibrant, sustainable waterfront. They cited examples from their earlier research trip to New York City exploring its waterfront redevelopment, and especially notable efforts to support manufacturing and creative industries in the historic Brooklyn Navy Yard.
The studio’s waterfront redevelopment plan will be completed by the end of the spring semester. For more information, visit the studio group’s website: http://waterfrontcities.wordpress.com.
]]>Read a more detailed position description.
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Minimum parking requirements dictate the scale of a city and render an environment unwalkable argues a 2012 Georgia Tech applied research paper. In “Parking: Its Effect on the Form and the Experience of the City,” Stephen Taul (MCRP ’12) claims parking regulations must be redesigned to prioritize the pedestrian and promote efficient use of space if a city is serious about encouraging social interaction.
Taul places three urban districts at the center of his detailed analysis of Atlanta's parking: Downtown, Midtown, and Buckhead. While all three districts follow many of the prescriptions of New Urbanist parking guidelines such as hiding the parking in the rear of a building or integrating parking into the ground level of a large structure, street level activity nevertheless suffers due to large lot sizes and individual ownership of parking facilities. To estimate the amount of street activity generated by parking, parcel data was used to show the locations in Atlanta with parking as a principle land use. Representative locations were then analyzed individually and cross-compared with parcel analysis of cities with strong public realms.
In order to create a more walkable urban district, Taul contends cities must regulate the amount, ownership, and design of parking through five basic principles. These rules include: parking requirements based on factors of walkability, required shared parking, common ownership of parking, maximized on-street parking, and direct connections from off-street parking to the public sidewalk. By offering alternatives to the “out of sight, out of mind” approach that pervades modern transportation planning discussions about parking, Taul’s 2012 applied research paper challenges a lingering obstacle to the successful design of truly walkable cities.
Stephen Taul is a 2012 graduate of Georgia Tech's School of City and Regional Planning, and advising for his applied research paper was conducted by Associate Professor Richard Dagenhart.
]]>Georgia Tech architecture and planning professor Perry Yang says environmental science is essential to sustainable urban design in his new book Ecological Urbanism: Scale, Flow and Design (China Architecture and Building Press). The book points to the overuse of the term “sustainability,” and suggests a renewed approach in which ecology can regenerate urban environments.
“Traditional urban design treats ecology in cities as ways of preserving or adding ecological elements such as green spaces to urban environment,” said Yang. “Ecological systems design advocates ecology by design, an inherently ecology-structured urban system.”
Yang presents three approaches to putting this into practice:
See Yang discuss the book in the College of Architecture Research Forum. The book is written in both Chinese and English and available for purchase at http://www.xhsmb.com/Item/95533.aspx.
Yang is an associate professor appointed jointly to the Schools of Architecture and City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech. A practicing designer, he has received numerous awards in international competitions, including first prizes in the 2009 World Games Park at Kaohsiung City of Taiwan (2005); the Eco-city design at Maluan Bay at Xiamen of China (2007); and theGreen Heart design at Shunde, Guangdong, the Pearl River Delta Region of China (2010). He serves on the board of the International Urban Planning and Environment Association (UPE), and recently co-organized UPE’s international symposium in Guangzhou, China.
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“Because the international volume and movement of obsolete electronics is growing exponentially, there is an urgent need for collaborative efforts and knowledge sharing between researchers, industry, the public and nonprofit sectors to ensure the safe processing of e-waste,” said Leigh. “We want to foster market-based approaches and innovative strategies for processing electronic waste that will lead to new products, business activity and jobs in metropolitan areas or world cities where most of the waste is being generated.“
The forum was co-hosted by the China National Electric Apparatus Institute and included participants from several major appliance companies in China; the United States Environmental Protection Agency, National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries; Georgia’s largest electronics scrap recycler, Molam International; and researchers from Georgia Tech, the University of Washington-Seattle, MIT, Sichuan University and Tsinghua University, among others.
David Green, architecture instructor and principal at the firm of Lord, Aeck & Sargent Architecture, says a city's zoning ordinance is arguably the single most important factor in how cities today emerge and change. Having worked with City of Atlanta councilman Kwanza Hall on projects to revive the Old Fourth Ward district just southeast of Georgia Tech campus, Green's senior urban design studio aimed to inform the execution of actual projects as well as help shape policy regarding zoning issues in the district.
Many of Atlanta's nearly 100 zoning categories are outdated or written in such a way that prohibits logical urban development. The students worked closely with College of Architecture alumnus Steve Cover, Commissioner of the Department of Planning and Community Development the City of Atlanta Bureau of Planning, to better understand the master planning process and the specific needs of the Old Fourth Ward district.
Hall attended the final jury, where students demonstrated ordinance elements that may be a more appropriate way to inform the built environment at an urban scale. Research frameworks were presented in three parts: development controls, urban design and design of the public right-of-way.
"The most exciting feature of the students' work for me," said Hall, "is knowing that the solutions they proposed will impact the City's planning efforts for the neighborhood. Thanks to professor Green's leadership, the students have gained an authentic experience contributing to an urban planning process."
"We will be providing the city with this information, including a presentation to the zoning task force, in the hopes that this will be used as a foundation for the re-writing of the ordinance," said Green. "We also hope this information will be incorporated into the Old Fourth Ward's master plan, which is currently being prepared by the City of Atlanta Bureau of Planning."
The master planning process concludes in September with an official vote by the Atlanta City Council incorporating the proposed changes into the city's comprehensive development plan. So, within just a few months of the end of spring semester, student work and recommendations will likely find a home in the official City master plan for the neighborhood.
The fast turnaround and successful collaboration can be attributed to strong relationships between Georgia Tech and the City of Atlanta, and the effort will likely lead to future collaborative projects. Currently, Hall and Green are in talks about next steps and possible projects that would involve the Old Fourth Ward district.
The College of Architecture at Georgia Tech champions advancements in the arts and the built environment through academic programs in architecture, building construction, city and regional planning, doctoral studies, industrial design and music. It is a leading producer of research in each of its disciplines, and among the top three in the area of architecture.
]]>Yang received his academic degrees from National Taiwan University (PhD, MSc and BSc) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MS). In 1999, he was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship and became the SPURS Fellow of School of Architecture and Planning at MIT from 1999 to 2001. After that, he joined National University of Singapore, as an Assistant Professor at Department of Architecture from 2001 to 2008 and as the leader of Urban Studies Group for the coordination of research activities of the group from 2001 to 2005. Perry's professional practice and teaching focus on Sustainable Design and Development in Urban Settings. Since 1998, he has been awarded prizes in urban design competitions continuously. The recent awards include the 1st prize in international competition of the 2009 World Games Park at Kaohsiung City of Taiwan in 2005, the Eco-city design at Maluan Bay in one of China's most important port cities Xiamen in 2007 and international competition of Suidong Bay Urban Design at Guangdong China in 2008. Since 2001, he has published more than 50 journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, reviews and design works that are related to issues of sustainability and ecological planning and design in urban environments. He is on the editorial boards of two academic journals, Progress in Industrial Ecology and Modern Urban Research. In January 2007, he was appointed the new board member of the International Urban Planning and Environment Association (UPE), an international academic community with a special interest in sustainable urban development.
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