urban systems

The Houston-Galveston region is even more vulnerable to hurricane flood damage today than it was when Hurricane Ike struck in 2008, concluded Md Yousuf Reja ’16 in his final Master of Urban Planning project.

A multidisciplinary group of Texas A&M students installed a temporary garden, transforming an otherwise mundane campus space as part of an April 26, 2017 tactical urbanism experiment staged outside of the Langford Architecture Center.

Not only do shady landscapes offer relief from the summer heat, they can also reduce heat-related medical emergencies, according to a study undertaken by Robert Brown, professor of landscape architecture at Texas A&M, and four colleagues.

In his new book, Philip Tabb, Texas A&M professor of architecture, explores the theory of serene urbanism and how he brought it to life as the master planner for Serenbe, an environmentally friendly development near Atlanta.

Texas A&M University researchers are collaborating on an NSF initiative aimed at identifying links between the U.S. food distribution system and the nation’s energy, water and transportation networks that are most likely to be disrupted in a natural disaster.

After each heavy rain last spring on the streets of an impoverished, east Houston industrial neighborhood, students from nearby Furr High School trained by Texas A&M graduate planning students mapped and tested the toxicity of storm floodwaters.

Extreme rainfall events in Houston like the April 18, 2016 deluge will become more frequent in the future according to a study conducted for the Resilience and Climate Change Cooperative Project, an interdisciplinary research initiative at Texas A&M.

Galen Newman, an assistant professor of urban planning at Texas A&M, is developing planning solutions for once-vibrant cities such as Detroit, Buffalo, N.Y., and Youngstown, Ohio, now plagued by growing vacant areas caused by shrinking populations.

Phil Berke, professor of urban planning, and Jennifer Horney, Texas A&M associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, are conducting research to raise community resilience to natural disasters.

As part of GIS Day at Texas A&M, the public helped artists, geographers and urban planners map some of the less tangible features of the Bryan/College Station landscape as they work to create a geospatial record of the region’s emotional topography.

As a vice president at the Landscape Architecture Foundation, Forster Ndubisi, head of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, guided development of two award-winning initiatives aimed at enhancing the quality of designed landscapes.

Municipal planners can use a tool developed by a Texas A&M urban planning student to determine if the location of current or planned bicycle lanes in their community enhance the mobility of residents who may not have ready access to automobiles.

Interdisciplinary groups of faculty and students in five U.S. universities will pair with counterparts in The Netherlands in a research project led by Sam Brody, professor of urban planning, to determine how to reduce the impact of coastal flooding.

A proposed “Ike Dike” to protect the Galveston/Houston area from hurricane storm surges should incorporate business parks, public spaces and pedestrian thoroughfares, concludes research funded by Texas A&M’s Institute for Sustainable Coastal Communities.

Chris Mulder, one of South Africa’s top environmental designers and an outstanding alumnus of Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, will present “De-Urbanization: Creating Sustainable Rural New Towns” at 5:45 p.m. April 29 in Scoates Hall Room 208.