URBAN COOL, Addressing Heat, Health and Habitat in the Anthropocene

URBAN COOL, Addressing Heat, Health and Habitat in the Anthropocene

Doug Kelbaugh, Taubman College Emil Lorch Collegiate Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning and  2016 Winner of the Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education, lectures on how cities combat climate change.

The illustrated talk will connect the dots on the role that the built environment plays in addressing the increasingly urgent problems of local and global warming. Urban Heat Islands and other forms of extreme heat such as heat waves kill more people than any type of natural disaster, as well as threaten the sustained livability and health of many cities. Luckily, the four design antidotes to heat islands simultaneously address climate change. And because heat islands are more immediately palpable than climate change, they can motivate humans to act more quickly and decisively against the unfolding, unprecedented and catastrophic climate challenge at both the local and global level.

Taubman College Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and Natural Resourcese, Dr. Larissa Larsen, and Urban Planning alumna Missy Stults (Ph.D. 2016) will respond to the lecture in a panel, in this first ever collaboration between the Urban and Regional Planning Program and the Michigan Chapter of the Congress of the New Urbanism. Dr. Missy Stults is a climate adaptation expert who works with local, regional, and tribal communities to enhance resilience towards climate change and natural disasters, and Larissa Larsen is certified environmental planner and landscape architect who conducts research quantifying environmental injustices related to urban heat islands and climate change.

This event is a collaboration between Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning’s Urban and Regional Planning Department, and the Michigan Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism