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Urban@UW Individual Questions

The School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, through teaching, research, and outreach, generates and disseminates knowledge for the stewardship of natural and managed environments and the sustainable use of their products and services. Its vision is to provide internationally recognized knowledge and leadership for environmental and natural resource issues. The school's programs focus on the sustainability and functionality of complex natural resource and environmental systems, using an integrated, interdisciplinary approach across multiple scales involving the urban-to-wildland gradient. Its programs serve society generally, and natural resource professions in particular, with graduates well equipped to contribute to discussions and solutions to resource problems facing the region and the world.

The goal of the environmental science and terrestrial resource management curriculum is to present fundamental knowledge and problem-solving experiences that enable students to understand the interdisciplinary dimensions of natural resource and environmental sciences and management. The structure of this curriculum provides great flexibility for students to pursue specialized fields through the formal program options, which include: landscape ecology and conservation; restoration ecology and environmental horticulture; sustainable forest management; and wildlife conservation; or to construct individual coursework to fit their educational goals.

Urban Studies develops individuals who want to make a difference in their community: a difference in what happens to older neighborhoods in transition; a difference in what happens as new suburban communities are planned and built; and a difference in the lives and well-being of persons across urban and suburban areas.

NonprofitNeighborhood organizers, program directors, advocacy managersGovernment (federal, state, local)Community developers, urban policy analysts, program managersBusinessManagers, coordinators and staff

Ray Hutchison is Professor of Sociology and faculty advisor for Urban Studies. He is Chair of Sociology & Anthropology and Director of the Hmong Studies Center at UW-Green Bay. Dr. Hutchison grew up in Nashville, Tennessee and received the BA (Sociology) from Harpur College at the State University of New York-Binghamton and the MA and PhD (Sociology) from the University of Chicago. His areas of research and teaching include urban studies, street gangs, race and ethnicity, and immigration. He is the editor of the SAGE Encyclopedia of Urban Studies, series editor of Research in Urban Sociology (Emerald Press), and editor of a new monograph series in urban sociology for Anthem Press (UK). If you have any questions, please contact us!

Master of Urban Planning program applicants are invited to upload an electronic portfolio or work sample to their online application, though one is not required. The work sample should illustrate their interests and abilities in areas related to urban design and planning. This can be an essay, a paper, a publication, a report, or a project for which the person applying to the program has had major responsibility.

Most applicants do not have extensive academic or professional experience in urban planning or design and they come from a wide range of undergraduate backgrounds. This is reflective of the field of planning, which is interdisciplinary by nature. The largest number of applicants tend to come from design fields, engineering, environmental sciences, geography, etc. Another large group come from the social sciences including sociology, political science, anthropology, etc. All these and others are useful backgrounds. What we look for is someone who has gotten some initial exposure to the planning field through any of a variety of means such as taking courses, community involvements, possible interning, and/or self-directed study or travel that has brought them to a point where they can make an informed decision about entering this field and can articulate some of their interests and objectives related to it. These, as well as a thoughtful discussion of why our program is a good fit, are the substance of the written statement of purpose for the application.

Additionally, the BS in Urban Design helps students turn their passions for social change and equity into meaningful urban design solutions producing livable cities and neighborhoods. This degree is designed to incorporate community questions and challenges into studio projects, preparing students for a life-time of commitment to public engagement.

These skills are applied in design studios dedicated to engaging with local and regional urban issues. Courses draw on the teaching resources of UW Tacoma faculty and experienced regional practitioners.

Have a large group? Please contact us at uwfarm@uw.edu for scheduling, at least two weeks in advance of when you would like to visit the farm. Though all our volunteer activities are outside, group size is limited to 30 individuals total and COVID-19 safety precautions must be followed.

This type of work on urban foraging helps to rethink ideas about urban forests and other green spaces as part of the larger food system where people find nourishment, maintain socio-cultural practices, and inhabit nature.

Urbanizing ecosystems are emergent phenomena that evolve over time and space as the outcome of dynamic interactions between socio-economic and biophysical processes operating simultaneously over multiple spatial and temporal scales. Individual choices and actions affect ecosystem processes and ecological conditions, which in turn affect human decisions. Understanding the dynamics of urbanizing ecosystems thus requires an integrated framework that simultaneously considers the reciprocal interactions between human and biophysical patterns, processes, and functions. Our research on coupled human-natural systems examines the dynamics of urban ecosystems to test hypotheses about how human-dominated ecosystems evolve through these complex interactions. We have used GIS analysis of remotely sensed data, empirical field measurements, modeling, and scenario planning to explore the complex dynamics of urban ecosystems.

PastBiocomplexity I: Modeling the Interactions Among Urban Development, Land Cover Change, and Bird DiversityBiocomplexity I research focused on addressing questions critical to understanding how complexity emerges from the interactions of multiple agents and processes at the metropolitan scale. How can we better understand and model the complexity of interactions between urban development, land cover change, and biodiversity? How can understand and quantify uncertainty within complex domains? How do public land use and environmental policies interact with this complex domain?Using the Seattle metropolitan area as our study site, research activities were organized around three major components:

Biocomplexity II: Urban Landscape Patterns: Complex Dynamics and Emergent PropertiesExpanding upon the Biocomplexity I research, Biocomplexity II projects aim at understanding the types of interactions between human and biophysical forces within urban ecosystems that drive the emergent properties of those systems. How do dynamic landscape systems evolve to generate emergent patterns that we see in urban landscapes? What nonlinearities, thresholds, discontinuities, and path dependencies explain divergent trajectories of urban landscapes? How do emergent urban landscape patterns influence biodiversity and ecosystem functioning? How can planning integrate this knowledge to develop sustainable urban landscape patterns?Using the Seattle and Phoenix metropolitan area as our study sites, research activities were organized around five major components to address these questions:

Leslie Coney, a second-year PhD student in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, has received a research award from the newly announced Google Health Equity Research Initiative. This grant supports Coney's work aimed at connecting Black birthing individuals with non-hospital care networks.

A new project led by HCDE PhD student Brett Halperin and Associate Professor Daniela Rosner asks the question, "how might interactive sonic narrative streetwear support urban community-based amplification of space, place, and belonging?" Urban@UW is supporting this work with a Research Spark Grant.

The Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture is committed to establishing and maintaining a supportive climate of inclusion, diversity, and collegiality among our interactions and through our actions and policies. We envision a department in which all individuals are engaged in a vibrant learning community, where ideas, experiences, and perspectives are supported, nurtured, and developed to their highest levels.

The Urban Education Doctoral Program (UEDP) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is an interdepartmental program preparing scholars to study, research, and analyze contemporary educational issues within urban settings.

The program prepares academic researchers and scholar-practitioners to work in a variety of urban settings. This work contributes to the improvement of urban education locally and globally. Students apply and are admitted to specific transcript designated specializations in the program.

The program is designed to permit students to integrate their particular media and curricular interests in art and art education with theoretical knowledge and educational practices tied to the contexts of urban education and community studies. An art education specialization provides each graduate student with opportunities for growth as an artist, teacher, and researcher through the development of their own arts practices and the study of the social and cultural implications of the arts in society and among learners. The program emphasizes the exploration of media, the development of socially responsive art curricula in urban environments, and research using disciplines of inquiry in the arts and art education. 2b1af7f3a8

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Urban@UW Individual Questions

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