School of Landscape Architecture & Planning News & Headlines

Shujuan Li and Bo Yang

CAPLA Faculty Partner with Salt River Project to Understand Arizona’s Electrified Transportation Network Needs

SRP is funding CAPLA faculty members Bo Yang, professor of landscape architecture and urban planning, and Shujuan Li, associate professor of landscape architecture and planning, to research the planning and design of electric vehicle charging stations. Learn more in this fascinating interview.

Phoenix Sunset

CAPLA Professor on Heat Mitigation and Management in the Southwest and the Broader Workforce

Leading extreme heat expert Ladd Keith, an assistant professor of planning and sustainable built environments in CAPLA, was interviewed for recent articles in The Hill and Arizona Science, an NPR radio program.

Biosphere 2

Reimagining the City in a Changing World: UArizona Hosts Inaugural Urban Humanities Global (Un)Conference

The inaugural Urban Humanities Global (Un)Conference held in Tucson March 3-5, 2023 will draw close to a hundred scholars, practitioners and community leaders to the Sonoran Desert to chart a path forward for the next generation of spatial transdisciplinary research, design and public engagement.

UArizona TPEG student members

UArizona Students Take Home Top Honors in International Theme Park Design Competition

The UArizona Theme Park Entertainment Group, comprised of CAPLA and College of Engineering students, received the highest commendation overall—with distinctions for technical skill, feasibility, innovation and communication—at the esteemed Toronto Met Thrill Design Invitational held last fall at Universal Orlando Resort.

Communal workspace

The Key to Healthier Employees Could be a Quieter, or Louder, Office Space

A new study by researchers including Esther Sternberg, professor of architecture, landscape architecture and planning (joint appointment), suggests that too much—or too little—office noise has a negative effect on employee wellbeing. The sweet spot? About 50 decibels, comparable to moderate rain or birdsong.

Pentre Ifan

Wales on My Mind: Landscape, History, Dwelling

“It’s the call of a place which combines powerful myths, tumbled landscapes, hardscrabble lives, and proud resistance to normative culture,” writes CAPLA Associate Professor of Architecture Laura Hollengreen following her summer visit to Wales, for a guest editorial published recently in Terrain.org.

Ghana street and residences

Ghana Digitized Its Address System: Its Failure Offers Lessons to Other African Countries Creating Smart Cities

Research by Seth Asare Okyere, CAPLA visiting assistant professor of urban planning, and Louis Kusi Frimpong, Matthew Abunyewah and Stephen Kofi Diko, show that digitalization initiatives in Ghana need to take local factors and engagement into account if they’re going to succeed.

Luna y Sol Cafe exterior concepts

Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Students Create Exterior Concepts for New South Tucson Coffee Shop

Under the guidance of landscape architecture lecturers Alexandra Stoicof and Nolan Bade, 19 students in a fall 2022 BLA design studio created concepts for a new coffee shop coming soon to South Tucson: Luna y Sol Cafe.

Lecture Recap and Video: Sharon Collinge on 'Working with Communities to Build Environmental and Societal Resilience'

Sharon Collinge shares her experiences working at the interface of land use and climate change in the context of building resilient ecosystems and communities in this CAPLA Lecture Series lecture.

Lecture Recap and Video: Lateral Office on 'Architecture's Other Agencies: Spatial Practice and New Vernaculars'

Mason White and Lola Sheppard of Lateral Office lecture on "Architecture's Other Agencies: Spatial Practice and New Vernaculars" on November 2, 2022.

Ghana

Ghana’s Informal Residents Show How Social Innovation Can Solve Urban Challenges

A recent paper by Seth Asare Okyere, CAPLA visiting assistant professor of urban planning, and Stephen Kofie Diko, assistant professor at the University of Memphis, argues that the solutions residents in poor, marginalized, informal and crowded urban areas come up with to make everyday urban life livable are a form of social innovation.

Camp Naco

Award-Winning Heritage Conservation Efforts by CAPLA Faculty and Students Lead to $4.6M in State Restoration Funding for Buffalo Soldier Camp

CAPLA Heritage Conservation Program Project Director Helen Erickson and graduate students Sarah McDowell and Teresa DeKoker have been instrumental in efforts to preserve Camp Naco, a borderlands Buffalo Soldier camp located near Bisbee, Arizona, resulting in awards for their story map and new funding to preserve the site.