Regional and Urban Design Committee

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The Regional and Urban Design Committee (RUDC) aims to improve the quality of the regional and urban environment by promoting excellence in design, planning, and public policy in the built environment. This will be achieved through its member and public education, in concert with allied community and professional groups. Join us!

2024 Symposium

The 2024 symposium will be held in Indianapolis, IN in November. Stay tuned for dates and location. Registration will open in July.

2023 RUDC Symposium

The RUDC Symposium, held in Washington, DC October 19-20, covered emerging trends, theories, and technologies that are shaping the future of regional and urban design. Watch the engaging highlight and speaker videos >.

  • 1.  Corona Destroys the Environment - Could It Help it Too?

    Posted 11-03-2020 10:56 AM

    Corona Destroys the Environment - Could It Help it Too? 

    Essays about the calamities of 2020 like to equate Corona and Climate Change as two big challenges that highlight and accelerate the problems we already have by acting as prisms that magnify existing societal fissures. Indeed, both a unprecedented global challenges that require actions beyond the scale humanity was used to do date. But in many ways, Corona and Climate Change pull in different directions, adding to the the stress they already exert. In fact it is much easier to see how Corona ruins the environment than how it could help.

    Plastic and COVID (Photo: Reuters)
    Much that is good for the environment is not good for fighting the virus. Specifically, Corona, as a matter of life and death, plays first fiddle and pushes the environment into second rank, record breaking hurricanes and forests fires notwithstanding. All eyes are on COVID not on Climate Change. Resources, and priorities are addressing the pandemic. The enormous sums spent on economic support measures could have easily funded a pivot to a "green economy", but they are now gone without much structural change to show for it. 

    Aside from starving the world's resources, Corona also pollutes the environment directly in quite a number of ways. This may seem like a minor collateral damage compared to the human and the material damage the pandemic inflicts, but that doesn't hold true in the long run. Unmitigated Climate Change and a ruined environment will eventually dwarf the impacts of any pandemic.

    COVID and the environment

    COVID is only the most recent excuse to push the decisive pivots needed to avert catastrophic effects from Climate Change and environmental degradation yet again into the future. The global, national and local inequities that express themselves in poverty, hunger, joblessness and under-education are the everyday reasons why a radical shift such as the Green New Deal is so difficult. COVID has made all those inequities worse and seemingly restructuring of the economy even harder. The presidential campaign provides a perfect foil for the natural human pattern of looking at the nearest obstacle first leaving the one further ahead unnoticed. 

    California fires: In Irvine 91,000 evacuated during the pandemic
    (Photo: CBS)

    Worse, here and now COVID adds directly to environmental problems. Here some examples: 

    • Reusable bags: Due to the ongoing fixation on fomites as a primary way of virus transmission,
    READ FULL ARTICLE 


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    [Klaus] Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
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  • 2.  RE: Corona Destroys the Environment - Could It Help it Too?

    Posted 11-04-2020 09:02 PM
    Thank you, Klaus, for another thoughtful, compelling piece. Yes, COVID  can teach us a lot about how to sustain our species and save the ailing planet. It and its next incarnations are massive challenges now and for the foreseeable future. 

    Having researched and written THE URBAN FIX: Resilient Cities in the War against Climate, Heat Islands and Overpopulation (shameless plug), I'd like to underscore that climate change is an even bigger problem. Because it exacerbates so many collateral crises, it is arguably the most epic issue yet to face humanity. 

    We need to marshal our energies - literally- to address its many causes. As designers of the built environment. We architects have an essential role to play, not only with AIA2030 construction practices, but by promoting compact, walkable, mixed-use development. 

    And we need to support and push our new, greener President. 

    Doug Kelbaugh FAIA, FCNU Topaz Medallion Laureate
    Seattle, WA







  • 3.  RE: Corona Destroys the Environment - Could It Help it Too?

    Posted 11-05-2020 05:51 PM
    I am inspired that maybe, just maybe the age of the star architect has passed.   This does not mean that there are no great architects, but rather that the measure of recognition of greatness has changed.  No longer is it based on the most odd, most extreme design statements that get the notoriety.   Now, for maybe the first time, it is the thoughtful practitioner that recognizes that the existential threat to our world is not show business, but rather the sustaining of our planet as a habitable place for mankind.   This extends to a concern for sustainable architecture, but also goes further into affordability and equality, in being recognized not just for the extreme rich, but also for the common man.   I see today so many of our group dedicated to doing the right thing, not just accepting commissions based on star power, but rather to make our day to day contributions to the betterment of the built environment and to social justice for the many who don't have the opportunity to even experience architecture in their lives.   So much of my career was defined by the star power of my peers, by their political astuteness and by their ego driven design.   I am thrilled to say that the lasting legacy of this work is just not really there.   I grew up in modernism, and I believe there is a statement to be made that modern design was important, but today, what more is important is that we are contributing to the betterment of our planet by doing sustainable, resilient work, and by doing our best to leave the lightest footprint on the planet that we can.   





  • 4.  RE: Corona Destroys the Environment - Could It Help it Too?

    Posted 11-06-2020 11:03 AM
    Right on, Rich. 
    The one-off, iconic flower vase has its place, but it should be the exception to the rule. Lots of good  background architecture is needed to set off the trophy buildings. We're getting there - at least here in Seattle, with plenty of solid, contemporary mixed-use, mid-rise, street-hugging developments. 

    Go Joe!

    Doug Kelbaugh