In October 2009, Richard Gonzalez of the Urban Design Lab participated in New York City’s Park(ing) Day, an event that involved participants in 100 cities around the world, with an installation in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. Gonzalez teamed up with fruit and vegetable vendors to create mini urban farm installations along metered parking spaces,… read more

Richard Plunz, director of the Urban Design Lab, spoke at Transcending The Discipline, the 5th International Urbanism and Urbanization Ph.D. Seminar, held at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium in October 2009. Plunz was involved in discussions on highly innovative topics related to urban development on five continents at the conference, which was organized by the… read more

The Urban Design Lab (UDL) announced in September 2009 its publication of Hancock and the Marcellus Shale: Visioning the Impacts of Natural Gas Extraction along the Upper Delaware, the fourth in a series of documents produced in conjunction with graduate level research seminars in the Urban Design Program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and… read more

Engineering and architecture students gathered for their first studio class in September 2009, eager to meet the challenge of Nilda Mesa, then-Assistant Vice President of Columbia University’s Office of Environmental Stewardship, to start at home: how to make Columbia University produce 50 percent less waste, use 50 percent less energy, and consume 50 percent less… read more

Richard Plunz and Richard Gonzalez of the Urban Design Lab (UDL) presented  preliminary research on the Dongtan-2 New Town Development Strategy to the Korean Planners Association and other advocacy groups in Seoul, South Korea in June 2009. The project examined the second phase of the Dongtan master plan extension, the new town development projected to… read more

Across the United States, several urban and suburban areas show high carbon emissions attributed to transportation and residential uses. While New York City’s density and transit system keep per capita emissions at low levels, carbon emissions sources remain a topic of concern. The 145th Street corridor in Harlem is no exemption: a surface temperature map… read more

The Urban Design Lab assisted in February 2009 in organizing and facilitating a research seminar with students from the Urban Design Program and Environmental Law Clinic at Columbia University. Students researched and analyzed the environmental constituents associated with the practice of gas drilling as part of an initiative in collaboration with the Upper Delaware Preservation… read more

This joint architecture and engineering studio proposing innovative environmental projects for East Harlem was presented to the GoGreen meeting convened by then-Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer in January 2009. This was the sixth such studio taught by Patricia Culligan of Columbia University’s Fu School of Engineering and Applied Science and Richard Plunz of the Graduate… read more