Research & Creative Work

Shaping Tomorrow's Leaders

ENVD Latin Honors student discussing project with faculty instructor

Undergraduate Research

Environmental Design Latin Honors Program
Undergraduate students in Environmental Design may choose to complete an honors thesis, which encourages exploration into designs or other scholary topics of interest. Students have the opportunity to work closely with a faculty thesis chair, publicly present their work and contribute original and creative work to the field of environmental design.

Research Centers

Environmental Design is home to the Community Engagement, Design and Research Center (CEDaR).

CEDaR partners with communities in Colorado and abroad to help build resilient and equitable cities and neighborhoods. The center's goal is to stimulate research and teaching on critical urban challenges, leading to innovations in design, policy and programs. It's work is rooted in a philosophy of engaged research and integrated with service.

Explore CEDaR

Latest Research News

Crown Institute, CEDaR host nature-based social prescribing programing

A day-long event was organized through a collaboration between the Renée Crown Wellness Institute and the Community Engagement, Design and Research Center (CEDaR). The occasion featured four innovative professionals who have engaged in research and programs centered around connecting communities to nature to address key health issues. Read more

Parking garages and parking lots – like these pictured in downtown Chicago in a 1956 aerial photograph – became a core feature of 20th-century U.S. urban development. Chicago History Museum/Getty Images

City planners are questioning the point of parking garages

Two assumptions undergird urban parking policy: Without convenient parking, car owners would be reluctant to patronize businesses; and absent a dedicated parking spot for their vehicle, they’d be less likely to rent and buy homes. Because parcels of urban land are usually small and pricey, developers will build multistory garages. And so today, a glut of these bulky concrete boxes clutter America’s densely populated cities. Read more

ENVD Teaching Assistant Professor instructs most popular Planetizen course of 2022

Specializing in transit-oriented development (TOD) since his undergraduate studies, Hersey was well prepared to present an introduction to the sustainable growth model as well as a deeper dive into TOD’s interaction with affordable housing. The latter course, Equitable Transit-Oriented Development, was among Planetizen Courses’ most popular classes of 2022. Read more

Kevin J. Krizek

Professor
Senior Advisor in the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment, U.S. Department of State

Dr. Kevin J. Krizek analyzes the dynamic characteristics of urban settings, specifically how access to services is provided and the role of government, local or federal. Through his research on the effectiveness of bicycle planning efforts and through projects like Design for Health (US APA’s National Planning Excellence Award for Best Practice), he aims to shape policies on land use/transportation and advance local planning efforts that further sustainable infrastructure.

His recent activities are focused on ensuring that practitioners get relevant and accessible research and that policy questions and initiatives are guided by robust and transparent performance measures. Through his work both domestic and international, he has developed informed insights to share remedies across borders that are both aspirational and evidence-based.

Marianne B. Holbert, AIA

Assistant Clinical Professor

Marianne Holbert's research focuses on environmental design, architecture, and integrative design pedagogy. As a licensed architect, she has experience working on diverse projects including award winning net-zero, fossil fuel-free and LEED accredited initiatives. Her design work furthers community-centered, sustainable, and innovative housing solutions.

Her current research projects explore cross-cultural understanding in design pedagogy and the cultural dimensions of learning in the design studio. She is a passionate educator who cultivates courses that invite knowledge discovery, innovation, and problem-solving through earnest curiosity. The threading of experiential learning with theoretical, historical, and cultural understanding unites her research and teaching.

Bruce Goldstein

Associate Professor

Bruce Goldstein examines how to adapt to social and ecological challenges and foster transformational change. He pursues this through research partnerships with learning networks, which enable place-based learning and system-wide adaptation to innovate solutions that are site-specific and applicable network-wide. He partners with ‘netweavers’ who are attempting to promote positive change across critical social and ecological thresholds.

His research is qualitative and interpretive and applies the principles of participatory action research. Specifically, he examines how skilled network facilitators can build and maintain the enabling conditions for productivity, commitment, creativity, and purpose in a time of disruption. This research is useful for designers and managers who seek to adapt to changing conditions and new contexts, scale innovation, and respond to crises.

Emily Greenwood

Teaching Assistant Professor

Emily Greenwood's professional work is focused in two general areas: researching and designing sustainable natural spaces and creating educational and ecologically responsive areas at the human-nature intersection. Her work in natural spaces includes the design of sustainable native landscapes, wetland design, ecological restoration, and climate responsive landscapes. Her work in spaces at the human-nature intersection includes trail and trailhead design, the design of playgrounds, and meaningful residential landscape designs.

Emily was a leader in the Boulder County open space program, where she worked to balance the preservation of these public spaces with the increasing need for recreation on open lands. Her published research includes works on how Learning Landscapes (a method of designing personalized, immersive, educational playgrounds in schools) can increase physical activity of children in underserved communities.

Christy Rogers, Ph.D., MLA

Teaching Assistant Professor

Dr. Christy Rogers' interests lie in the intersections of policy, history and geography that underlie the residential landscape we see today. This includes the legacies of racial residential redlining, the inequitable impacts of the subprime lending and foreclosure crisis, and vulnerabilities in the secondary mortgage market, from predatory lending to climate change. Her research has been directed towards neighborhood revitalization, food insecurity and vulnerable seniors and has resulted in significant community investment.

Dr. Rogers came to Environmental Design from the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University, where she provided research, communication, outreach and development leadership. She is co-editor, with John A. Powell, of Where Credit is Due: Bringing Equity to Credit and Housing After the Market Meltdown.

Shawhin Roudbari

Assistant Professor
Co-Director, CEDaR

Shawhin Roudbari is completing two projects that represent the primary focuses of his work: the study of social problems and community engagement, respectively. The first project interrogates the racialization of architecture and space by exploring the ways that spaces, policies, and people can act as aggressors, resistors, and witnesses. His second project explores the idea of participatory anti-racist design dialogues through a focus on exclusion and inclusion in small-scale community institutions.

Shawhin's other projects build on similar themes of social problems (especially racism and whiteness), political participation, and community engagement. He is increasingly collaborating with ENVD students to translate their research into speculative design concepts and installations. Shawhin recently finished a community-engaged design collaboration exhibited at the current Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Jota Samper

Assistant Professor
Co-Director, CEDaR

Jota Samper's work at Informal Settlements Research (ISR) concentrates on sustainable urban growth and dwells at the intersection between urban informality ("slums") and violent urban conflict. The main goal of ISR is to create and reveal innovative urban tools to visualize the challenges (climate change, regulatory and violence) presented in informal landscapes. He co-founded Mobility/Movilidad, a nonprofit dedicated to video archiving and mapping with marginalized communities.

His project "Living rooms at the Border" with Estudio Teddy Cruz exhibited at the MoMA. He is a fellow of the "Drugs, Security and Democracy, SSRC," alongside colleagues from Oxford University. Samper's work, the "Atlas of Informality," has been presented in a TEDx talk to an audience of more than 950k viewers.

Stacey Schulte

Director
Teaching Professor

Stacey Schulte’s teaching, research, and practice focus on designing and planning for urban areas and landscapes that support community and ecological well-being. Her work focuses on various aspects of public lands planning, open space preservation, and the relationship between urban growth and the environment.

Recent projects include a focus on willingness-to-pay for land conservation, public perceptions of large-scale conservation projects, habitat quality of protected areas, and hazard mitigation. She recently developed a visitation and use project for Boulder County Departments of Transportation and Parks & Open Space and a master plan for the Town of Haxtun, Co. She is currently a co-PI on the research project “Loving it to Death: Measuring and Managing for the Human Carrying Capacity of Open Space Lands” funded by the University of Colorado, and the City and County of Boulder.

Sara Tabatabaie, Ph.D.

Teaching Assistant Professor

Dr. Sara Tabatabaie's research focuses on the nexus between community health, design of the built environment and policies that shape human behaviors. Her research examines the relationship between urban greenness, shade, landscape design, and physical activity. Sara's dissertation included three separate projects, exploring the design features of streetscape/landscape that affect people’s physical activity behavior in residential streets.

Another area of Sara’s research focuses on design and execution of land use plans that affect active lifestyles, specifically the implementation of bicycle master plans (BMPs) in Colorado. Sara is currently pursuing her research work at the Community Engagement, Design and Research Center (CEDaR) where her projects focus on design for active mobility, urban forestry, gentrification and housing.

Ping Xu, Ph.D.

Professor

Dr. Ping Xu's research interests include systems thinking and integration of architecture and landscape design, comparative studies of feng-shui, cultural models and spatial design in built environments, and prehistoric landscape setting patterns in the US Southwest. Her recent research has emphasized adapting to climate challenges, particularly identifying landscape patterns in areas prone to fire and post-fire debris flows in Colorado and beyond to avoid future failures during such hazards.

Her research articles have been published in the top refereed journals in her field, including "Journal of Architectural and Planning Research" and "Landscape Journal."

Main menu

Research & Creative Work

Shaping Tomorrow's Leaders

Undergraduate Research

Research Centers

Latest Research News

Crown Institute, CEDaR host nature-based social prescribing programing

City planners are questioning the point of parking garages

ENVD Teaching Assistant Professor instructs most popular Planetizen course of 2022

Faculty Research & Creative Work

Kevin J. Krizek

Marianne B. Holbert, AIA

Bruce Goldstein

Emily Greenwood

Christy Rogers, Ph.D., MLA

Shawhin Roudbari

Jota Samper

Stacey Schulte

Sara Tabatabaie, Ph.D.

Ping Xu, Ph.D.

Main menu

Search

Other ways to search:

Research & Creative Work

Shaping Tomorrow's Leaders

Undergraduate Research

Research Centers

Latest Research News

Faculty Research & Creative Work