探花精选

Moderator: TBD

Beyond the Science Park: Housing, Everyday Public Life, and Social Interface in Tainan’s Periphery
I-Hsuan Wang, National Cheng Kung University
Hsiang-Yi Ho, HYMH Design

Boulevards as Social Infrastructure: Repairing Chicago鈥檚 Emerald Necklace for Climate Equity and Pedestrian Life
Hyesun Jeong, University of Cincinnati

New Delhi Urban Futures: Negotiating Historic Urban Form Under Pressures of the Megacity
Jess Vanecek & Pankaj Vir Gupta, Tulane University

From Organic Fabric to Fragmented Urban Form: Morphological Disruption in Isfahan鈥檚 Historic Core
Ghazal Asadi Eskandar & Ali Moazzeni Khorasgani, South Dakota State University

Redeeming Utopianism? The Transmutation of Utopias in China鈥檚 Dream Town
Colleen Chiu-Shee, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Moderator: TBD

Designing in Drag: Three Acts of Queer Worldmaking and the Right to the City
Gabriel Gonzalez, University of Florida

Neon Grid: Queer Space, Urban Memory, and the Politics of Visibility
Finis Eliot, Belmont University

Perpendicular Urbanism: Diasporic Spatial Literacy and the Second Line Archive
Thomas Mouton, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

A Constellation of Queer [Non]Fictions: Decentralizing the Queer Enclave
Quan Thai, Lawrence Technological University

Centering the Periphery: Balthazar Korab鈥檚 i tetti di Roma, 1966鈥�68
John Comazzi, University of Virginia

Moderator: Peter Darby, AIA Regional & Urban Design Committee

Presenters: David Gamble, Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Gamble Associates
Stephen Gray, Harvard University
Molly O’Neill Robinson, University of Utah & MOR Design & Planning
Richard Sommer, University of Toronto

Description:聽 This opening session of the AIA Regional & Urban Design Knowledge Community (RUDC) Symposium frames urban design as an evolving civic practice operating between architecture, planning, landscape, policy, engagement, research, development, and implementation. At a time when cities are confronting climate risk, housing pressure, inequality, infrastructure transformation, and shifting public expectations, urban design鈥檚 鈥渋n-between鈥� role may be both its challenge and its greatest strength. The session explores how the field is defining its agency today, how the identity of the urban designer is expanding, and how urban design can more clearly demonstrate public value across scales, institutions, and communities.

Moderator: TBD

Sub-Urban Seepage: Water Systems, Urban Design, and Territorial Repair in Central Arizona
Jordan Kanter, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Designing Flood-Resilient Housing on Reclaimed Land
Qiong Wang, University of Georgia
Yao Wang, Louisiana State University

Reverse Urbanization: An Adaptive Grid for Territorial Repair
Paul Mosley, Kent State University

After Extraction: Making Territory in Armenia鈥檚 Vedi River Valley
Guillaume Othenin-Girard, The University of Hong Kong

Living Infrastructures: Urban Corridors as Sites of Density, Mobility, and Repair
Livia Catao Cartaxo Loureiro & Davi De Lima Vaz Xavier University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Moderator: TBD

The Revival of the West-Lake Dream Space
Yanfeng Chen University of Florida

(In)heritance: Rome鈥檚 EUR as A Case of Ambivalent Urban Reuse
Lior Galili, Hampton University
Jennifer Minner, Cornell University

Daylighting and Scenography: an Urban Preservation Practice
Aleksandr Mergold, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Friedrichstra脽e, Berlin: Urban Vacancy and the Mismatch Between Global Ambition and Local Reality
Elena Gyurova, TU Berlin

Sawtooth & Spur: Measures of Railyard Urbanism
Thomas Provost, University of Detroit Mercy

Moderator: Patty Heyda, Washington University in St. Louis

Presenters: Dean Almy, The University of Texas at Austin
Mar铆a Arquero de Alarc贸n, University of Michigan
Marcella Del Signore, New York Institute of Technology
Mona El Khafif, University of Virginia
Stefan Gruber, Carnegie Mellon University
Julio Salcedo Fernandez, City College of New York

Description: At a moment of global politico-eco-social crises when urban design education is needed more urgently than ever, many programs are facing intensifying threats. These threats are financial, but also arguably ideological and thus existential. This panel convenes educators in urban design to sample (then co-strategize responses to) the range of pressures facing urban programs in the US under current federal directives. These pressures bring new challenges to how we define and defend priorities for city-making, for academic freedom and democracy itself. The format for this session is less presentation-style, and envisioned more of a moderated conversation open to all viewpoints among panelists and audience members.

Moderator: TBD

Waiting in the Heat: Integrated Design Research Method for Urban Heat Vulnerability in鈥疉lexandria, Virginia
Rebekah Lawrence, Neha Kumawat, Stephen Mercado, Sijie Gao, Fatemeh Mashhadi Mohammadzadeh Vazifeh, Brittni Ericson, Virginia Tech Washington Alexandria Architecture Center

From Urban Design to Designing Urban Processes: Risk Resilient Impact Framework for the Philippines
Joshua Bolchover, The University of Hong Kong

Urban Design Adaptation under New Climate Scenarios in Hawai驶i
Felipe Igualt, University of Hawai驶i at M膩noa

A Data-Driven Design Framework for Reducing Energy Costs in High-Density Residential Complexes
Kyujin Choi & Dong-Wook, Sohn Yonsei University

Architecture, Ecology, and Spatial Infrastructure: Lessons from the Seto Inland Sea
Lucy Navarro, Columbia University

Moderator: TBD

Abu Dhabi as a Political Project: The Absence of Commons and Infrastructure by Others
Canay Itez, Middle East Technical University

The Street They Cannot Move: Place Identity, Customer Behavior, and the Limits of Urban Formalization in India
Keerthi Reddy, Mohamed Sathak A.J. Academy of Architecture

Beyond Feedback: Frameworks for Community Stewardship in Climate Resilience Planning
Srusti Shah and Monseratt Cortes Macias & Koushik Srinath, Mithun

Anticipatory Urbanism through Poly-Crisis: Crisis-Led Reconstruction and Spatial Change in Urban Informality
Jarin Tasnim Khan, University of Washington, Seattle

A Project of Situated Pedagogy: From Territorial Corridor to Urban Infrastructure
Romina Canna & Gregorio Astengo, IE university

Moderator: Stephen Gray, Harvard University

Presenters:Stephen Gray, Harvard University
Patty Heyda, Washington University in St. Louis
Mona El Khafif, University of Virginia
Mary Anne Ocampo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Description: Ask an urban designer what urban design is, and the answer is often expansive: a practice, a way of thinking, a bridge between architecture, landscape, and planning; between form and policy, building and city. But what does this disciplinary openness enable鈥攁nd what might it prevent? Does a field without a clear disciplinary constitution risk lacking legibility, legitimacy, and the capacity to set its own intellectual agenda? Or is its refusal to settle precisely what allows urban design to engage conditions that no single discipline can address?

These questions are particularly urgent at a time when accelerating urbanization, climate change, growing inequality, and rapid spatial transformation demand more just, resilient, and qualitative forms of urban development. Urban design has a critical role to play in addressing these challenges precisely because they exceed the boundaries of any single discipline. Yet the field鈥檚 position between architecture, landscape, planning, policy, and development also raises questions about its disciplinary identity and capacity to shape its own agenda.

The panel uses four distinct positions as provocations for a broader conversation. Gray raises questions about institutionalization and the role of associations, conferences, and journals in sustaining a field over time. Heyda considers the opposite possibility: that disciplinary openness and the generative space of the in-between are among urban design鈥檚 greatest strengths. El Khafif introduces a European perspective, where urban design is not a degree-protected profession like architecture or planning but is embedded within undergraduate and graduate professional education rather than primarily positioned as a post-professional specialization. Ocampo approaches the question through practice, examining urban design鈥檚 role in coordinating knowledge and tools distributed across architecture, planning, landscape architecture, and real estate.

Rather than seeking a single definition of urban design, these positions provide a starting point for discussion: What does the field gain by remaining in-between? What does it lose? And what forms of disciplinary identity, curricular footprint, institutional structure, and professional practice might urban design need to shape its own future?