Architecture & Urban Planning

A team of eight MIT undergraduate and graduate students won two awards in this year’s U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Better Buildings Case Competition, out of more than 150 students from across the country. The win means MIT students have taken home not just one, but two, prizes from the competition each of the three years it has taken place.

Posted July 16, 2014 - HONOLULU - Gov. Neil Abercrombie today announced the nominations of Jonathan Scheuer to the Land Use Commission (LUC), as well as Rona Fukumoto and Edwin Taira to the Board of Directors of the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation (HHFDC), effective immediately. All are interim appointments subject to state Senate approval. Scheuer was appointed to an at-large seat and is the first LUC appointee to fill vacancies left by five recent resignations on the nine-member commission.

Editor's Note: The Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation helped fund Sarah's early work on Conservation Development with the Wildlife Conservation Society through a Leadership Grant.

TransForm Executive Director Stuart Cohen urged the Assembly to push Caltrans to move forward on one of SSTI’s most immediately-achievable steps: relinquishing oversight of bike facilities on urban streets and endorsing the National Association of City Transportation Officials Urban Street Design Guide. ”When Caltrans first put in place this requirement that cities and states follow its Highway Design Manual’s guidance on bicycle design, it made sense,” he said. “There wasn’t good practice on rearranging intersections and how to design bike lanes.

“There was a concern for people with an interest in sustainable environmental design who would go to landscape architecture but would not get in,” said Sharla Cheney, undergraduate adviser for landscape architecture and environmental design. LDA is an intensive and selective program that only allows up to 36 applicants to declare it as a major each year. SED allows students without an aptitude for art, drafting and design interested in sustainable planning to pursue a degree.

What do people living in Boston, Baltimore, Miami, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix, and Los Angeles have in common? From coast to coast, prairie to desert -- residential lawns reign. But, according to a new study, beneath this sea of green lie unexpected differences in fertilization and irrigation practices. Read more

A team of university researchers from California wrapped up a weeklong intensive study and report on Portland’s India Street neighborhood Monday, telling area residents it could be revitalized as an internationally known “ecodistrict.”