landscape architecture & urban planning

Sam Brody, professor of urban planning at Texas A&M, was interviewed on PBS Newshour about Galveston’s efforts to build a healthier city after Hurricane Ike. He is also the Mitchell Chair in Sustainable Coasts at TAMU-Galveston and director of the Center for Texas Beaches and Shores.

Students will have a unique opportunity to work with internationally renowned, contemporary artists in specialized workshops during the Spring 2012 Artist in Residence program at A&M’s College of Architecture. The workshops are open to anyone in the college, and no previous art experience is required.

As higher education leaders across the nation wrangle with budget constraints and consider reforms aimed at doing more with less, Texas A&M College of Architecture educators continue to embrace the studio, the time-tested cornerstone of design education, as the most critical component of modern design pedagogy.

A new report by the Texas Transportation Institute ranks 328 seriously congested highway corridors across the U.S. for the first time by morning and evening drive times, middays and weekends. It also identifies "reliably unreliable corridors with the most day-to-day variations in congestion.

Imagining New Futures, an event-packed forum sponsored by the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, drew students and urban planning practitioners to Texas A&M Nov. 17-19.

The Council of Landscape Architecture Educators has recognized Forster Ndubisi, head of Texas A&M’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, characterizing his administrative leadership as “incontestably beyond the expectations of a department head.”

Four businesses headed by former college students Shan Jenkins ’88, Richard Garza ’88, Phillip Wales, ’78, ’79 and Ryan Pape ’01 are on a list of the 100 fastest-growing Aggie-owned or Aggie-led businesses in the world compiled by the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship at Mays Business School.

Walter Gillis Peacock, professor of urban planning at Texas A&M, is on a National Academy of Sciences committee hosting a two-day January public workshop in Houston to examine issues relating to sustainability and human-environment interactions in the Houston metropolitan area.

Michael Lindell, professor of urban planning at Texas A&M, was quoted a New York Times’ Oct. 3, 2011 article examining scientists’ role in warning the public of possible hazards.

Ann Moss Joyner, an author who uses geographic information systems to illuminate racial discrimination issues that inform her books, will be the keynote speaker for Texas A&M University’s GIS Day — a campuswide celebration showcasing real-world applications for GIS technology.

A revitalization plan for Sealy, Texas’ downtown district, created by Texas A&M Master of Urban Planning students, won the 2011 Student Planning Award from the Texas Chapter of the American Planning Association.

A report published by the Texas Transportation Institute, authored in part by Tim Lomax, a lecturer in urban planning, suggests too little progress is being made ensuring the nation's transportation system will be able to keep up with job growth when the economy improves.

Prospective students can learn more about Texas A&M’s Urban and Regional Science doctoral program during a Oct. 23-25 open house, held in conjunction with the College of Architecture Research Symposium: Natural, Built, Virtual.

Private property rights are prevailing over efforts to avoid building in hazardous areas, said Sam Brody, professor of urban planning, in the Sept. 2011 issue of Architect, the magazine of the American Institute of Architects. He was quoted as part of the magazine’s coverage of a rise in natural disasters.

Two Texas A&M urban planning professors have garnered a two-year, $313,000 National Science Foundation grant to research the effectiveness of using 100-year floodplains in predicting property damages from floods, and to develop improved criteria for assessing the risk of inundation in low-lying coastal areas.