School of Landscape Architecture & Planning News & Headlines

The Colorado River is the backbone of water management in the southwest, serving seven states and Mexico. Ongoing drought conditions that are linked to climate change threaten Colorado River water deliveries to Arizona, but also provide an opportunity to rethink the allocation of water rights and to focus on a more sustainable approach to management.

In this panel discussion, we will explore the impact of Arizona’s construction defect liability laws on multifamily development, with a particular focus on possible legislative reforms to better balance buyer protections with development costs. While construction defect liability laws provide important protections for buyers, there is a growing concern among researchers and housing advocates that, if overly restrictive, these laws can increase development costs and lower production.

Kevin Kudo-King explored strategies for immersive design at the intersections of site, craft, and collaboration.

London, an undisputed global city, is well known for having some of the world’s most expensive housing but also boasts a substantial amount of low-cost social and affordable housing. This talk sketches the historic roots of affordable housing in London, explains how it is currently built and operated, and explores current political and practical challenges—some of which are shared by Arizona cities despite their very different contexts.

The Western Planner organization has named CAPLA Associate Professor Ladd Keith its 2025 Planner of the Year, honoring his pioneering leadership in climate-responsive planning and community resilience across the American West.

A team of Master of Science in Urban Planning (MSUP) students at CAPLA received the Arizona APA’s Best Student Planning Project Award for their capstone, “Community Investment Strategy Toolkit for the City of South Tucson.”

CAPLA Dean Nancy Pollock-Ellwand has been named a recipient of the University of Guelph Alumni of Honour Award, recognizing her global leadership in cultural heritage conservation and lifelong dedication to education.

Professor P. Bryan Heidorn is the Associate Dean for Research for the College of Information Science. This talk is a bird’s-eye view of the AI and machine learning landscape and its implications for academia.

CAPLA Master of Landscape Architecture students Ashley Danforth and Xavier Fernandez are leading a $45,000 grant-funded project to advance sustainable stormwater solutions on campus. Through research, collaboration, and community outreach, their work will create a campus-wide database of green stormwater infrastructure to help address challenges like drought and extreme heat.

Ladd Keith, director of the University of Arizona’s Heat Resilience Initiative and a leading national expert on heat planning, has been appointed to Governor Katie Hobbs’ new Workplace Heat Safety Task Force. In this role, he will help develop science-based, equitable guidelines to protect Arizona’s workers from the growing risks of extreme heat.

CAPLA researchers are leading efforts to ensure community sustainability and equitable growth in Santa Cruz County as part of a university-led, cross-disciplinary study funded by South32.

Housing affordability continues to be a critical issue in the United States. Meagan Ehlenz's research explores the potential for scaling shared equity homeownership (SEH) as a strategy to address Arizona’s growing housing affordability crisis.