landscape architecture & urban planning

GIS Day, the worldwide salute to geospatial technology and its power to transform and enhance lives, is going to be extra “spatial” this year in Aggieland, where the Texas A&M celebration is expanding to encompass three event-packed days, Nov. 17–19.

Procedures to create resilient communities — places that avoid, absorb and recover quickly from natural disasters — are detailed in a new book co-authored by four urban planning educators at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture.

A new book of classic and contemporary writings illustrating key themes shaping the theory and practice of ecological design and planning, compiled by Texas A&M urban planning professor Forster Ndubisi, will be available this December.

Harold Adams ‘61, chairman emeritus of RTKL, one of the world’s largest design firms, and an Outstanding Alumnus of the College of Architecture, was among the elite group selected as Faculty Fellows for Texas A&M’s Institute for Advanced Study.

“Come Hell or High Water: The Battle for Turkey Creek,” a documentary chronicling a decade-long struggle of Gulfport, Miss. residents to stop a land development project threatening their neighborhood, will be screened at 5 p.m., Oct. 22, in Evans Library Annex.

The Texas A&M College of Architecture’s 16th annual faculty research symposium, “Natural, Built, Virtual,” took place Oct. 27, 2014 at the Langford Architecture Center on the Texas A&M College Station campus.

A weekday shuttle now carries students to and from the Langford Architecture Center and the College of Architecture’s Automated Fabrication and Design Laboratory at Texas A&M's Riverside Campus.

Ralph Gordon Echols, Texas A&M professor emeritus of landscape architecture and urban planning and a former College of Architecture associate dean, died Friday, July 18, 2014 at Centra Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia.

To contend with the rapidly escalating threat of coastal flooding, government agencies need to adopt a new, fundamentally different strategy focused on flood prevention rather than recovery, according to a recent National Research Council report.

Age, income and race are primary factors effecting the vulnerability of populations in coastal regions to climate-related natural disasters, according to a recent study by researchers at Texas A&M’s Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center.

Stellar performances at the recent Mexican national swimming championships by Liliana Ibañez, a Bachelor of Science in Urban & Regional Planning student at Texas A&M, led to a haul of four gold medals and a new national record in the 50-meter butterfly event.

Toxic waste pits along the San Jacinto River in far east Harris County containing dioxin and other hazardous substances are a “loaded gun” threatening human health and the environment, said Sam Brody, professor of urban planning at Texas A&M University.

The National Academy of Environmental Design is getting a boost in its efforts to advocate sustainable design and environmental stewardship from Phil Berke, one of the nation’s foremost land use planning experts and professor of urban planning.

An idea incentivizing physical fitness, recycling and public transit use and another enhancing fireplace heat distribution, both hatched in a class taught at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, were among the winning entries in a campus idea competition.

Cooler weather will soon greet the assortment of greenery atop building A of Texas A&M’s Langford Architecture Center as a research project begun in 2012 to learn what plants will thrive on green roofs and green walls in Texas’ often hostile climate continues.