Designed for use by teachers, students, historians, and general users, the site features hundreds of documents and images about children in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, drawn from newspapers, government and other official records, oral histories and memoirs, and many other sources.
Revitalizing Urban Main Streets focuses on the physical and economic renewal of urban neighborhood Main Streets by combining classroom work with an applied class project. The course content covers three broad areas:
an overview of the causes for urban business district decline, the challenges faced in revitalization and the type of revitalization strategies employed;
the physical and economic development planning tools used to understand and assess urban Main Streets from physical design and economic development perspectives; and
the policies, interventions, and investments used to foster urban commercial revitalization.
The course has dual goals: to explore the integration of economic and physical development interventions in ways that reinforce commercial district revitalization efforts, and to apply this knowledge through the development of a formal neighborhood commercial revitalization plan for a client business district.
You are part of the NASA design crew and your task is to design a suit to keep the human body safe from the hazards of deep space. Are you up to the challenge? This is an ADA compliant document.
This resource was created by Mason Vrbka, in collaboration with Dawn DeTurk, Hannah Blomstedt, and Julie Albrecht, as part of ESU2's Integrating the Arts project. This project is a four year initiative focused on integrating arts into the core curriculum through teacher education, practice, and coaching.
This course focuses on the physical and economic renewal of urban neighborhood Main Streets by combining classroom work with an applied class project. The course content covers four broad areas:
An overview of the causes for urban business district decline, the challenges faced in revitalization and the type of revitalization strategies employed;
The physical and economic development planning tools used to understand and assess urban Main Streets from physical design and economic development perspectives;
The policies, interventions, and investments used to foster urban commercial revitalization; and
The formulation of a revitalization plan for an urban commercial district.
TED Studies, created in collaboration with Wiley, are curated video collections supplemented by rich educational materials for students, educators and self-guided learners. In Ecofying Cities, speakers reveal ideas about sustainable development (and redevelopment) that aren't all about setting limits, going without or preparing for the worst. Rather, they find solutions in resourceful, hopeful, beautiful communities.
Students learn about the wonderful and fascinating country of China, and its environmental challenges that require engineering solutions, many in the form of increased energy efficiency, the incorporation of renewable energy, and new engineering developments for urban and rural areas. China is fast becoming an extremely influential factor in our world today, and will likely have a large role in shaping the decades ahead. China is the world's largest energy consumer and the largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions, leading engineers and scientists to be concerned about the role these emissions play in rural and urban public and environmental health, as well as in global climate change. Through exploring some sources of air pollution, appropriate housing for different climate zones, and the types of renewable energy, the lessons and activities of this unit present ways that engineers are helping people in China, using an approach to cleaner, smarter, healthier and more-efficient ways of living that apply to people wherever they live.
You’ll learn about today’s urban challenges focusing on developing countries, referred to as the global south. We will debate the benefits of three pathways, going beyond traditional urban strategies and policies:
1. Spatial justice
Spatial justice is undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges of urban contexts in emerging economies.
2. Housing Provision and Management
Increasing demand in the global south calls for alternative approaches in housing provision and management.
3. Urban Resilience
Understanding resilience not as a mere struggle for survival, but as an opportunity to build better urban environments.
We will discuss question such as:
Is the just city framework applicable in cities with extreme socio-economic inequality?
Can community-led housing initiatives provide effective solutions for households in need?
How can resilience support development instead of perpetuating a disadvantaged condition?
This course focuses on the physical and economic renewal of urban neighborhood Main Streets by combining classroom work with an applied class project. The course content covers four broad areas:
an overview of the causes for urban business district decline, the challenges faced in revitalization and the type of revitalization strategies employed;
the physical and economic development planning tools used to understand and assess urban Main Streets from physical design and economic development perspectives;
the policies, interventions, and investments used to foster urban commercial revitalization; and
the formulation of a revitalization plan for an urban commercial district.
In this seminar, students will design and perfect a digital environment to house the activities of large-scale organizations of people making bottom-up decisions, such as with citizen-government affairs, voting corporate shareholders or voting members of global non-profits and labor unions. A working Open Source prototype created last semester will be used as the starting point, featuring collaborative filtering and electronic agent technology pioneered at the Media Lab. This course focuses on development of online spaces as part of an interdependent human environment, including physical architectures, mapped work processes and social/political dimensions.
A cross-disciplinary approach will be taken; students with background in architecture, urban planning, law, cognition, business, digital media and computer science are encouraged to participate. No prior technical knowledge is necessary, though a rudimentary understanding of web page creation is helpful.
Through an overview of the components of the hydrologic cycle and the important roles they play in the design of engineered systems, students' awareness of the world's limited fresh water resources is heightened. The hydrologic cycle affects everyone and is the single most critical component to life on Earth. Students examine in detail the water cycle components and phase transitions, and then learn how water moves through the human-made urban environment. This urban "stormwater" water cycle is influenced by the pervasive existence of impervious surfaces that limit the amount of infiltration, resulting in high levels of stormwater runoff, limited groundwater replenishment and reduced groundwater flow. Students show their understanding of the process by writing a description of the path of a water droplet through the urban water cycle, from the droplet's point of view. The lesson lays the groundwork for rest of the unit, so students can begin to think about what they might do to modify the urban "stormwater" water cycle so that it functions more like the natural water cycle. A PowerPoint® presentation and handout are provided.
This course explores the physical, ecological, technological, political, economic, and cultural implications of big plans and mega-urban landscapes in a global context. It uses local and international case studies to understand the process of making major changes to urban landscape and city fabric, and to regional landscape systems. It includes lectures by leading practitioners. The assignments consider planning and design strategies across multiple scales and time frames.
"Designing a dream city is easy. Rebuilding a living one takes imagination.†" " " -Jane Jacobs This course examines the challenges that cities will face and strategies they can use to prepare for the impacts of climate change. Particular attention will be paid to the presence of global disparities, the needs of vulnerable populations and resource constrained locales, and the ways in which local government and community-based activities can achieve equitable levels of climate-readiness.
Economic, religious, gender, and ethnic differences must be negotiated every day in the urban arena. When tensions and conflict escalate into violence, the urban space becomes the battlespace in which these tensions are negotiated. This course examines urban development challenges in conflict cities through multiple disciplinary perspectives on urban conflict. This course also reviews literature that focuses on when violence and cities intersect. Students will learn about policy innovations, and study potential planning, design, and policy solutions.
This seminar engages in the notion of space from various points of departure. The goal is first of all to engage in the term and secondly to examine possibilities of art, architecture within urban settings in order to produce what is your interpretation of space.
Students apply their understanding of the natural water cycle and the urban "stormwater" water cycle, as well as the processes involved in both cycles to hypothesize how the flow of water is affected by altering precipitation. Student groups consider different precipitation scenarios based on both intensity and duration. Once hypotheses and specific experimental steps are developed, students use both a natural water cycle model and an urban water cycle model to test their hypotheses. To conclude, students explain their results, tapping their knowledge of both cycles and the importance of using models to predict water flow in civil and environmental engineering designs. The natural water cycle model is made in advance by the teacher, using simple supplies; a minor adjustment to the model easily turns it into the urban water cycle model.
In this course, we explore how new mobility systems can be leveraged to promote equity, improve health outcomes, and increase accessibility. Lectures by transportation professors from Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the United States are supplemented with interviews with preeminent entrepreneurs, city planners, community development experts, and mobility justice advocates.
Topics covered include land use and urban form; new mobility business models, pricing, policy, technology, and data; the importance of designing new mobility systems for equity, health, and the environment; and racial justice within the transportation field.
This course is part of the Open Learning Library, which is free to use. You have the option to sign up and enroll in the course if you want to track your progress, or you can view and use all the materials without enrolling.
Students investigate passive solar building design with a focus on heating. Insulation, window placement, thermal mass, surface colors, and site orientation are addressed in the background materials and design preparation. Students test their projects for thermal gains and losses during a simulated day and night then compare designs with other teams for suggestions for improvements.
These exercises are designed to guide a student to an understanding of how rainfall and storm events result in runoff over the surface of the earth. Runoff is influenced by the nature of the surface of the earth. Streamflow is particularly influenced by urbanization-the paving over of permeable surfaces with impermeable ones. In light of this, students are encouraged to think about design elements that incorporate more permeable surfaces into their own environments, including their school parking lots and neighborhoods.
The Springfield Studio is a practicum design course that focuses on the physical, programmatic, and social renewal of an urban community in Springfield, Massachusetts by combining classroom work with an applied class project. The course content covers the areas of physical design/urban design and the related analysis and planning tools used to understand and assess urban conditions from a design and development perspective. Urban design issues are investigated in the context of social and economic challenges within the community. Thus, the course has dual goals:
analyze physical conditions in the community, assess community need, propose physical design interventions; and
assess community capacity and programmatic needs.
The ultimate goal is to explore the integration of social, programmatic and physical development interventions in ways that reinforce community revitalization efforts, and to apply this knowledge through the development of a formal neighborhood revitalization plan that addresses community needs.