Thought Leadership

At CAPLA, thought leadership on architecture, design, landscape architecture, heritage conservation, real estate development, urban planning, sustainability and much more drives our research, design and practice—resulting in a rich, transformative educational and community experience centered on the built environment.

Read our latest thought leadership, and learn how the CAPLA community is building a changing world:

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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.

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Robert Miller

A Design Career Well Administered: Robert Miller, Professor of Architecture and Former Director, School of Architecture

Robert Miller AIA joined CAPLA in the spring of 2010 as director of the School of Architecture. In his 12 years at CAPLA, Miller has brought not only stability to the school after a long series of interim directors, but also a new era of student success, faculty creative scholarship and research, and industry partnership. He retires on January 1, 2023.

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R. Brooks Jeffery

The Transformative Career of a Lifelong Explorer: R. Brooks Jeffery ’83 B.Arch, Professor Emeritus of Architecture

Though Emeritus Professor of Architecture R. Brooks Jeffery retired from UArizona in June 2022 as associate vice president for research, at CAPLA he will be long acclaimed for his dedicated work across many roles, including associate dean and Drachman Institute director—as well for his wide-reaching service and award-winning research on heritage conservation in arid environments.

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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.

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Eduardo Guerrero

Crossing City Limits (and International Time Zones): CAPLA's Eduardo Guerrero on His Popular Urban Podcast

Though the pandemic was a challenge for many, for CAPLA Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Urban Design Eduardo Guerrero it presented a new opportunity—connecting ideas from urbanism experts around the world through conversations, resulting in his urban podcast, Crossing City Limits. Learn more in this fascinating interview.

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Damon Levertt

Architecture Senior Lecturer Shares His Innovative, 'Prideful' Favorite Place for Arizona Daily Star

Damon Leverett, an architecture senior lecturer at CAPLA, takes readers along for a tour of the Health Sciences Innovation Building as part of the Arizona Daily Star's “Favorite Places” series, concluding that the HSIB exemplifies the types of public and educational buildings that should be "prideful places for our community and society."

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Jesús Edmundo Robles Jr. and truck

Architecture Professor of Practice Takes Arizona Daily Star Readers on a Southern Arizona Road Trip

Jesús Edmundo Robles Jr, an architecture assistant professor of practice at CAPLA, takes readers along for a ride in his trusty pickup truck as part of the Arizona Daily Star's “Favorite Places” series, narrating the spare beauty of the 80-mile drive between the Santa Rita and Whetstone Mountains, though Sonoita, and into the Patagonia Mountains.

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Eiffel Tower

Ketchup, the Telephone and Cherry Coke: CAPLA Scholar Explains How World's Fairs Bring Inventions to the Public

World's fairs introduced us to Heinz ketchup, the Ferris wheel, the telephone and countless other now-ubiquitous innovations. Lisa Schrenk, a CAPLA associate professor who studies world's fairs, has helped establish a new institute to study how the events impact global society. Learn more in this interview.

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Hot city, blurred

Extreme heat is the deadliest climate hazard in the U.S. How are urban planners tackling it?

In a paper published in December 2021 in the Journal of the American Planning Association, ASU's Sara Meerow and UArizona's Ladd Keith analyzed the results of their extreme heat survey of planners from diverse cities across the United States to establish baseline information for a growing area of planning practice and scholarship that future research can build on.