(Re)Building Downtown: A Guidebook for Revitalization from Smart Growth America

Architects and local elected officials alike benefit from a broad view of urban redevelopment. This guidebook provides strategies for those who want to re-invigorate and strengthen neighborhood centers of economy, culture, and history through a smart growth approach, utilizing a seven-step approach to develop a successful downtown district.

Rethinking refugee communities

Can refugee settlements be a benefit to the host community rather than a burden? Learn more about this 2015 AIANY Honor award-winning project—a collaboration between Ennead Lab, Stanford University and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—that seeks to answer this question with an eye towards durable solutions and rational exit strategies

Promoting community dialogue on placemaking in Phoenix

Phoenix is a fast-growing city that is often critiqued for not having a great deal of authenticity. AIA Phoenix Metro recently tackled this effect head-on, with an editorial series in partnership with the Downtown Phoenix Journal. The series explored buildings, structures, neighborhoods, real estate, and politics in the city, and didn't shy away from controversial subjects, including deploring what happens when architects don't "show up" for major civic dialogues

Design & Health

The intersection of public health and the built environment presents an extraordinary opportunity for architects. Read through recent research, explore design strategies, and learn about your impact on public health as an architect.

The secrets of a comeback neighborhood

Can comeback neighborhoods be fashioned l through policy or do they emerge on their own power in such a way that government policies only create an obstacle to what would happen anyway? Examine some of the factors that have come into play with Baltimore's redevelopment.

by Nikolaus Philipsen, FAIA

Wednesday, May 18 at 6:00 pm

Kick off your convention experience! Come hang out with your Regional and Urban Design Knowledge Community and connect with first time and returning attendees at this new event as you:

  •  Indulge in festive cocktails and hors d'oeuvres
  •  Enjoy the interactive fun, including building blocks & a photo booth
  •  Revel in the unique architectural details of the venue

Cost is $25  |  The Racquet Club of Philadelphia (map)

Data mining reveals the four urban conditions that create vibrant city life

A controversial book in the 1960s proposed four conditions that are essential for vibrant city life. Originally criticized for the lack of empirical evidence, new research based on data mining now suggests "that Jacobs's four conditions for maintaining a vital urban life hold for Italian cities," conclude De Nadai and co.

by Emerging Technology from the arXiv, MIT Technology Review

How architects can fight urban food deserts

Architects can bring two unique attributes to any endeavor — imagination and vision — and they are both on display in these innovative efforts aimed at providing quality food sources where they are urgently needed.

by John Schneidawind, ilookup.org

Video games will become "new tools" to solve architecture's global challenges

Video games will become an increasingly important tool for designing cities, according to Los Angeles architect and game developer Jose Sanchez. "As architects, we have been trained to think of local scales: small, medium, large and extra large, but today we face global issues and we need new tools to address a new kind of scale: a planetary scale."

by Marcus Fairs, Dezeen