planning

In partnership with Texas A&M’s AgriLife Extension Service, the Texas A&M College of Architecture is expanding its 25-year-old Texas Target Cities program that helps communities lacking resources and expertise resolve issues critical to their future.

Though natural and man-made disasters are inevitable, scientists at the Texas A&M College of Architecture are working on ways to minimize their impact, hasten recovery and gain valuable insight from the process.

The 100-year floodplain, a longstanding metric for determining the chance of an area’s inundation by flood waters, appears to be an inaccurate measure for predicting potential flood-related loss, said Samuel Brody, professor of urban planning at Texas A&M.

Six former students from Texas A&M’s College of Architecture who have risen to the top of their professional field while making significant public service contributions were honored Oct. 11, 2013 as outstanding alumni.

Emergency management planners could reduce losses and strengthen community resilience by mapping socially vulnerable areas and focusing hazard mitigation efforts where they are most needed, said Shannon Van Zandt, a Texas A&M urban planning professor.

Urban issues affecting the Texas-Mexico border will be the focus of Dialogo on the Border, sponsored by the diversity council at the College of Architecture and the Dwight Look College of Engineering April 19-20 in Brownsville, Texas.

Plans to develop or rehabilitate sites in the Brazos Valley and upgrade facilities at Veterans Affairs healthcare centers netted awards for landscape architecture students.

With guidance from award-winning architect Miguel Roldán, graduate architecture students are developing plans and high-density building solutions for the future growth of Texas A&M's College Station campus.

Houston ranks as the sixth-worst U.S. city for traffic congestion in the Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s 2012 Urban Mobility Report, which includes a comprehensive database of traffic congestion, its effects on air quality and its costs to drivers in all 101 U.S. urban areas with populations above 500,000.

In the first large-scale study of its kind, Texas A&M researchers are investigating how storm forecast graphics, such as those depicting potential storm paths with cone-shaped regions of uncertainty, influence public decision making during hazard events.

Adrian Smith, designer of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and a champion of sustainable design, will receive an honorary doctor of letters degree from Texas A&M at spring commencement.

Residents in a suburban area north of Houston can jog, hike, fish or observe nature in a award-winning park system primarily designed by landscape architecture students at Texas A&M.

Student-designed proposals for the future development of two areas along University Drive, created by students at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, were showcased Jan. 18 in room 102 of the Zachry Engineering Center.

Circuit of the Americas, a major new Formula One auto-racing venue in Austin, garnered significant praise in an assessment conducted by Master of Land and Property Development students at Texas A&M, who evaluated the facility in terms of its social/cultural, economic, environmental and sensory values.

"Inside the Megastorm," a recent episode of the PBS series, "NOVA," was supplemented by research on effective flood mitigation strategies conducted by Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center research fellows Sam Brody and Wesley Highfield.