2026 CAPPA Forum

1. Amy Trick, Architecture 

Title: Beat the Heat: Cooling Strategies for Dallas' Oak Cliff Neighborhood 

In the face of global warming, heat is making many spaces increasingly hostile within the built environment. In the state of Texas, days with temperatures at or exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius) are expected to be four times as common by 2036 as they were in the 1970’s and 1980’s. As temperatures climb, the human health risk affiliated with heat exposure also grows. However, not all people or places within the built environment are equally affected by extreme heat. In many places, communities with lower economic means suffer the ramifications the most, as some residents cannot afford to run their air conditioning consistently or access community cooling spaces or resources.

Oak Cliff, a neighborhood on the west side of the city of Dallas, Texas, shows high concentrations of hot zones per the Heat Watch Dallas data. It is also a diverse neighborhood that, except for select gentrified pockets, has many areas with over 20 percent of the population living below the poverty line. Within this study, this neighborhood was first considered through mapping to understand in which zones it is hardest for residents to access cooling resources. Dallas County does not have specifically designated facilities intended for dealing with the heat but rather utilizes existing public buildings like libraries as ad-hoc cooling centers. After this neighborhood overview, two of the densest commercial streets of the Oak Cliff neighborhood were studied through heat mapping, thermal camera imaging, and temperature readings of surfaces and built elements – sidewalks, bus stops, benches, and other public amenities – in the urban context. The comparative analysis of tectonic and spatial qualities of these zones will be built upon to propose how small changes or upfits to existing typical elements of the built environment can facilitate better health and comfort by allowing respite from the heat. While the unfortunate reality of climate change is that North Texas cities will get hotter, understanding potential design changes that can be made to public spaces and amenities in this context can help keep Dallas and other metropolitan areas comfortable, livable, and vibrant.

2. Danielle Danso, Architecture

Title: An Integrated Architectural System Retrofit Assessment: A Case Study in North Texas

Building retrofits offer a significant opportunity to reduce energy consumption across the building sector. Conventional building retrofits prioritize equipment upgrades, often at the end of equipment life with limited improvements in overall energy performance. An integrated architectural system approach to retrofit a building can mitigate energy use by addressing the solar heat gain at its source and lessen the stress on heating and cooling systems. Building facades, as a complex interface between the inside and outside of buildings, have the capability to function as a protective or regulatory element against severe fluctuations of external climate. Integrating a climate responsive or adaptive facade has both energy and non-energy benefits such as enhanced occupant health and productivity. Retrofitting a building facade proves that sustainability and preservation can coexist. Furthermore, facade system retrofits also significantly impact cities by lowering energy consumption, improving urban climate, creating jobs, and enhancing building aesthetics and value.

This study aims to propose an integrated architectural system retrofit approach, which has capability to improve daylight and energy efficiency simultaneously. To achieve that, this study uses the Engineering Research Building (ERB) at University of Texas at Arlington as a case study to quantify the benefits of the proposed design. Arlington, TX is located in ASHRAE Climate Zone #3A. This zone is characterized by warm-humid conditions requiring higher needs for cooling and some energy demand during heating degree days. This study has been led by two main research questions: (1) What are the interdisciplinary subjects that correspond to adaptive façade concepts for creating an innovative architectural form? (2) What is the most effective factor in adaptive façade to enhance daylight and energy use simultaneously? To answer these questions, different types of façade systems in terms of their morphology and technologies were explored and classified. These categories include adaptive, glazing, green systems, and kinetic facades. These systems and their sub-categories were carefully studied, several façade design case studies in similar climate zone were reviewed, and based on findings, the research hypothesis was formulated as: ‘A climate-responsive system (i.e., an adaptive system) shall maximize energy savings and daylight.’ The interdisciplinary subjects that correspond to adaptive façade concepts were found to include morphology, computational design, engineering, and material science. Two design alternatives were considered in addition to the baseline, they were modeled, and their behavior was simulated to assess performance of the systems designed. The performance metrics considered include energy use intensity (EUI) and useful daylight illuminance (UDI). The system that outperformed in both daylight and energy use involved petal shaped panels that respond to sun path. An adaptive façade retrofitting approach is expected to result in a 30% energy reduction compared to baseline building energy use in North Texas. As an integrated architectural system approach, we are exploring the use of advanced materials such as thermochromic coatings to enhance sustainability benefits of the proposed system to retrofit the ERB. This is an ongoing project and final results will be shared in the symposium.

3. David Hopman, Landscape Architecture

Title: Creative Regionalism: Renewing the Aesthetic Experience of Landscape in Environmental Design and Planning

In this presentation, David Hopman will outline insights from his new book Creative Regionalism: Renewing the Aesthetic Experience of Landscape in Environmental Design and Planning, with a foreword by Frederick R. Steiner. The book is a monograph about a regionalism that is creative, cosmopolitan, and critical, with 104,000 words and 158 color figures. The book is in print as the first monograph that applies critical regionalism to the aesthetics and priorities of landscape architects.

4. Luis E. Macias Barrientos & Jiwon Suh, Public Affairs & Planning

Title: Tejando Comunidad: Informal health solutions among the North Texas Latine immigrant population

This study informs effective planning approaches by centering the health-seeking behaviors of Latine immigrant populations. Despite limited access to healthcare, Latine immigrants exhibit higher life expectancy, lower death rates, and lower infant mortality rates than natural-born residents in a phenomenon called the Hispanic Health Paradox (HHP). Centering immigrant populations is necessary to comprehend the proliferation of paradoxical health outcomes. So, what solutions do Latine immigrants engage in to receive healthcare in the United States?

Urban planning scholars have focused on housing patterns and urban placemaking among this community by exploring transportation obstacles. However, this research overlooks the solutions low-income Latine immigrants use to access healthcare. Particularly since many immigrant communities lack confidence in formal governmental institutions. Reliance on informal mechanisms like community health events, non-prescribed medicine, family members, or other health-seeking solutions can help better explain immigrant health solutions in the U.S.

To better understand the HHP, this study surveyed the health-seeking solutions of Latine immigrants in a Dallas-Ft. Worth area health fair through an anonymous cross-sectional survey. This survey seeks to understand how health insurance availability among Latine immigrant health fair participants affect their access to and use of (in)formal medical behaviors, specifically, their medical information sources, type of facilities used to receive or access care, and reliance on community events to receive healthcare. The health fair chosen is unique because of the trust the Latine immigrant community has with the organizer of the health fair, attracting over 1,000 participants, most of whom are immigrants.

Findings indicate Latine immigrants rely on informal access to healthcare through non-prescribed medicine, family members, and community health events, that help enrich discussions on the Hispanic Health Paradox. These results can have implications for better health interventions in places Latine immigrants trust to provide resources and health information. City leaders seeking to implement community-oriented development strategies can use health fairs and other community events to more effectively target hard-to-reach populations, improve community outreach, and build community trust.

1. Monica Maldonado-Griego, Architecture

Title: Operationalizing Ecological Intelligence: A Diffusion Model Framework for Passive Design in Architecture

This research investigates the extent to which diffusion models can move beyond visual representation to engage with the underlying logic of passive environmental design. It examines how artificial intelligence can be operationalized not merely as a tool for image generation, but as a collaborator capable of internalizing, encoding, and articulating resilient architectural principles rooted in ecological performance. Positioned within the broader discourse of intelligent cities and human-centered design, the work proposes a new methodological framework for integrating data-driven intelligence into the architectural design process.

A novel workflow was developed that combines structured semantic prompting, LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) fine-tuning, and 3D translation pipelines to generate, evaluate, and evolve design solutions. Each phase tests how AI can embody passive design strategies rather than simply depicting them. Multiple LoRA models were trained, each focused on a specific ecological strategy: daylighting, natural ventilation, thermal massing, green roofing, and shading articulation to guide the generative process and establish a structured hierarchy of environmental intelligence. Through iterative testing, the models produced architectural forms that demonstrated measurable environmental performance while maintaining conceptual coherence and formal integrity.

Environmental simulations, including daylight and passive ventilation analysis, were integrated to evaluate and refine the feedback loops. The workflow was evaluated through a case study in Dallas, Texas, a subtropical climate marked by environmental complexity and an urgent need for climate-responsive housing. The results show that diffusion models, when properly trained and semantically guided, can synthesize environmental data and spatial intent to generate architecture that is performative, adaptive, and contextually responsive.

A central contribution of this research lies in redefining the architect’s role within human-machine collaboration. Rather than displacing intuition or authorship, the framework situates the designer as an active mediator, one who curates datasets, scripts environmental intelligence, and interprets AI-generated outcomes through ethical and ecological lenses. Design intelligence thus emerges not from automation, but from dialogue between human and machine, environmental logic, and formal imagination.

This study reframes AI’s place in architecture from an engine of formal novelty to a collaborative agent for environmental reasoning. Within this framework, architecture becomes a living system of feedback and adaptation, sustained through digital evolution. By bridging artificial intelligence, ecological design, and generative methodology, the research contributes to the discourse on intelligent and resilient urban futures. Proposing a model of practice where technology amplifies empathy, contextual sensitivity, and environmental responsibility principles essential to designing the future metropolis.

2. David Franco, Architecture

Title: From Utopia to Equality: The Politics of Emancipation in Modern Social Housing

The story of twentieth-century modern housing is often told as a cautionary tale. From the radiant hopes of the 1920s to the spectacular failures of the 1970s, this narrative culminates in images of decaying high-rise estates in the Projects of Baltimore or Chicago, riots in the suburban banlieues of Paris or Marseille, and the collapse of social utopias into stigmatized ghettos across the world. From this perspective, modern housing is less a triumph of design than a warning against the hubris of architects and planners who believed they could engineer society through form and rationality.

Yet this narrative, while familiar, is incomplete. It overlooks the emancipatory ambitions that animated some of the pioneers and late practitioners of modern housing across the world, and it dismisses the profound transformations these projects introduced in how ordinary people in Non-Western contexts could live, dwell, and appear as equal members of society. If we examine modern housing through Jacques Rancière’s philosophy of emancipation, a different picture emerges. For Rancière, emancipation is not about the benevolent instruction of the ignorant or the careful guidance of experts; it is about the disruption of hierarchies through the “redistribution of the sensible”—that which can be seen, heard, and recognized as part of our common world. Emancipation occurs when those who were excluded from visibility, voice, or dignity seize their right to inhabit them. I will argue that modern housing, despite its contradictions, belongs to this emancipatory tradition of disrupting the hierarchies of voices in modern societies.

3. Nazmun Akter Pia & Karabi Bezboruah, Public Affairs & Planning  

Title: Bridging Sectors, Engaging Communities: Collaborative Climate Adaptation in Coastal Bend, Texas 

This study examines how regional collaboration in the Coastal Bend region of Texas facilitates public participation and shapes climate adaptation planning. It is guided by the central question: How do collaborative networks involving cross-sector participants such as nonprofits, local governments, and industry actors promote or inhibit public engagement in climate adaptation efforts? As the region faces intensifying climate risks and rapid industrial expansion, the urgency of networked and inclusive environmental governance has never been greater. Nonprofit organizations can play an especially important role in this landscape, often acting as bridges between sectors to help align government and industry actions with community needs and priorities (Kagan & Dodge, 2023).

This research focuses on the interplay between inter-organizational collaboration and civic participation in regional environmental governance. While cross-sector partnerships are widely recognized as critical for advancing regional climate adaptation, the extent to which these networks incorporate public voice and community-based organizations remains underexamined. Coastal Bend offers a valuable case for investigating this gap, given its institutional fragmentation, environmental vulnerability, and ongoing collaborative initiatives.

This study draws on three interrelated theoretical frameworks to examine the organizational and participatory dynamics of regional climate governance: Ansell and Gash’s (2008) Collaborative Governance, Arnstein’s (1969) Ladder of Citizen Participation, and Fung’s (2006) Participatory Mechanisms. Ansell and Gash (2008) define collaborative governance as a structure of consensus-driven decision-making between public agencies and non-state actors, emphasizing key variables such as trust, leadership, and institutional design. To complement this organizational focus, Arnstein (1969) offers a critical lens for evaluating the degree of public power embedded within these networks, with her eight-rung ladder illustrating the range from symbolic participation (manipulation, therapy) to meaningful power-sharing (citizen control). Fung’s (2006) framework further enriches the analysis by mapping engagement across three dimensions: who participates, how they interact, and what authority they hold. Together, these three frameworks enable a layered analysis of both the processes and power dynamics shaping public participation.

This study employs a qualitative case study design. Data collection involves 28 semi-structured interviews with local government officials, nonprofit leaders, emergency managers, and industry representatives, alongside document analysis of regional planning materials. Preliminary Findings reveal a mixed landscape of collaboration, characterized by promising cross-sector partnerships but persistent challenges in integrating community voices meaningfully. Nonprofits emerge as vital intermediaries, translating public concerns into planning strategies; however, formal public engagement mechanisms are unevenly applied across jurisdictions.

As the public sector workforce continues to evolve in the 21st century, the motivations of public servants are shifting. With less than 8% of the federal workforce under age 30 and increasing waves of retirement, the federal government faces an urgent need to attract and retain younger talent. This developing study explores how various generations perceive and approach federal government careers by examining perceptions via focus groups and interviews, identifying trends from existing data, and evaluating strategies for recruiting and retaining dedicated talent discussed in current literature. Further, the study seeks to understand why younger talent may or may not be interested in public service at the federal level. This research aims to offer practical strategies for recruiting and retaining dedicated talent, ultimately building a more representative and engaged federal workforce. As more work is needed to understand how younger generations compare or differ from older generations in the workplace, this study contributes valuable insights into shaping future public sector employment policies and best practices.

Current research suggests that different generations may possess opposing values and preferences for how they are led and motivated at work. This presentation invites insights into the development of data collection and analysis strategies to reveal the motivations and deterrents of federal government careers. Using public service motivation and representative bureaucracy as frameworks, the study aims to uncover the nuances and needs of a modern and diverse workforce. The highlights of this presentation benefit researchers and practitioners interested in understanding and adapting recruitment and retention efforts. Ultimately, understanding how different generations view their public sector responsibilities and motivations informs not only the literature on public service motivations but also practitioners' work to foster a more inclusive and evolving workforce that aligns with generational expectations

1. Charles MacBride, Architecture

Title: New Passive House Projects (finally) in North Texas

The development of a passive house certification and energy standard continues to gain popularity and acceptance in the US. Originally a standard developed by the European Passivhaus Institut, a revised climate-based model was adopted in the US by Phius (the US Passive House Institute) in 2015. This model recognizes the diverse climate types in the US and allows project energy models to meet these specifically. Adoption of the Phius standard can now be fully seen in colder locations (Boston, Seattle, Vancouver) with code compliance, housing incentives, workshops and training. In North Texas, however, recognition and adoption of this standard lags, not unlike other areas in the southern & southeastern US. But the reason is more cultural and political than climatic. The state of passive house advocacy and number of available examples still represent only a grassroots effort.

This paper and presentation will examine four current passive house projects that I have been designing here in North Texas and SW Oklahoma. The work represents a mix of applied professional and creative activity, and is a continuation of research into the cultural, political, and industry attitudes of sustainable building. The four projects include three single-family houses and a multi-family project. As of this writing, one of these is nearly completed with construction and will soon be receiving its final Phius certification. The research also includes the ever-evolving potential of pre-fabrication. All of the four projects have specified some type of prefabricated system, but practical and financial issues have put the uses of these into question. The presentation will be framed by a discussion of the architectural decisions based on site, integrated building systems, energy and water usage, and design innovation.

Looking specifically at Texas, passive house commissions are coming almost exclusively from clients building their “long-term” home, all holding the education and core values that prioritize sustainable living as a response to climate change. This is a commonality across these four projects plus many new projects now being built in Austin. Unlike DFW and Houston, Austin has seen a spike in Phius-certified single family house construction, supporting the demographics of that growing, tech-savvy city. The only exception of the four projects to be presented is a small multi-family project in Dallas, initiated by a developer investigating the ROI of meeting the Phius standard against a minimized budget, for what will result in nine rental units.

Methodology:
This work is applied creative practice supplemented with industry-based and regulatory research. These projects are all ongoing work, and at this writing have not been fully completed or realized.  

Anticipated Outcomes:
Goals for these projects start with fostering and establishing an understanding of building science, passive house principles, and promotion of energy efficiency in the industry. Individual project goals include the always unique experience of building for clients, managing construction methods and costs, and adapting to design changes. The passive house principles in use are straightforward and can be applied to all building types. Advocating for better building practices and an aggressive industry response to climate change is the basis for achieving a sustainable future.

2. Dennis Chiessa, Liliana Morales, Angela Uribe, Alexis Chastain, Architecture

Title: Community-Based Urban Design Guidelines for Fort Worth’s Historic Northside

Amid accelerating urban growth in North Texas, Fort Worth’s Historic Northside faces dual pressures of cultural displacement and speculative redevelopment. The Historic Northside District Architectural + Urban Design Guidelines address this tension by reframing preservation as a driver of equitable urban transformation rather than a constraint on progress. Developed through a collaboration between the Historic Northside District Committee, the City of Fort Worth, and ch_studio, the project translates community values into an implementable design governance framework for the Main Street corridor.

Rooted in six principles—People First, Authenticity and Craft, Inclusive Growth, Everyday Urbanism, Environmental Resilience, and Cultural Continuity—the guidelines integrate social and environmental priorities into the physical language of urban form. They seek to reconcile heritage conservation with attainable housing, mobility, and public-realm improvement through a layered districting strategy.

The framework defines four interlocking designations: a Landmark District safeguarding the architectural and symbolic core; Conservation Districts extending contextual development north and south; a Mixed-Use 1 District supporting small-scale density and local enterprise; and a Public Improvement District linking design policy with long-term collective maintenance. Together, these mechanisms align spatial regulation with neighborhood agency and stewardship.

Methodologically, the project advances an integrated model of participatory design and policy translation. Through workshops, mapping, and bilingual outreach, residents and business owners co-authored priorities for form, character, and reinvestment. The resulting document functions simultaneously as a technical instrument—guiding scale, materiality, and land use—and as a cultural narrative articulating the Northside’s lived identity within a changing metropolis.

Critically, the work challenges the binary between historic preservation and urban development by proposing “resilience through continuity.” Rather than freezing the neighborhood in time, the guidelines position its architectural and social heritage as the foundation for adaptive growth. This approach foregrounds incremental change, material authenticity, and localized governance as pathways toward urban justice.

Aligned with the symposium theme, “Designing the Future Metropolis: Community-Centered, Intelligent, and Resilient Solutions,” the project demonstrates how design frameworks can operationalize resilience beyond environmental metrics—embedding it in social structures, memory, and participation. The Historic Northside Guidelines offer a replicable model for community-led design governance, illustrating how local knowledge and cultural identity can inform metropolitan futures rooted in community and equity.

3. Jenifer Reiner, Karabi Bezboruah, Ariadna Reyes-Sanchez & Emily Nwakpuda, Public Affairs & Planning

Title: Manufactured Home Attainability in Tarrant and Dallas Counties

Standard municipal development plans and policies in Dallas and Tarrant Counties have limited the availability of affordable housing options, notably MHs. The predominant residential land uses are either single-family detached (SFD) homes or large-scale multifamily (MF) complexes. In 2024, both Dallas and Tarrant County appraisal districts reported that more than 90 percent of residential parcels fall into these two housing types—single- or multi-family dwellings (SFD or MF). While approximately 7 percent of US households reside in manufactured homes (MHs) in a variety of tenures (Durst & Sullivan, 2019), manufactured home (MH) parcels are approximately two percent of all residential parcels within the two primary counties in the North Central region, Tarrant and Dallas Counties (DCAD, 2024; TAD, 2024). This paper investigates the “Is there a relationship between MH affordability, accessibility, acceptability, and availability and MH attainability in the municipal development entitlement process in Tarrant and Dallas Counties? What is the variation between the local governments in these two counties in the North Central Texas region?

Research finds that MH parks are decreasing with urban cores in Texas, often located within informal subdivisions, or developed within counties which are not authorized by the state of Texas to adopt zoning regulations. These scenarios are indicative of the tenuous and restrictive relationship between municipal mechanisms and the attainability of MH homes (Durst & Sullivan, 2019; Lamb et al., 2023; Sullivan, 2023; Wallis, 1991). Therefore, to better understand the implications of the municipal regulatory environment on MH attainability, a mixed methods approach is proposed to investigate each of the major components in the attainability framework for MH uses in each of the 68 municipalities in the Tarrant and Dallas Counties.

Analysis of the local government setting will begin Ostrom’s (2011) Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to provide an overarching theoretical relationship the socio-economic spatial outcomes of municipal activities and MH attainability. Within the attainability framework, four theories are used to operationalize each of the four components. Theories of spatial and transportation equity interrogate affordability and accessibility outcomes, respectively. The theory of policy diffusion illuminates the MH availability factor, while administrative burden theory examines the citizen-state relationship and the acceptability of the dwelling type.

Appraisal district data is used for spatial analysis at the parcel, residential account, and municipal levels. Qualitative content analysis of municipal documents and procedures and stakeholder surveys reveals systemic exclusion. Various sources are used for quantitative data collection; however, the appraisal district data provides granularity as parcels directly relate to municipal activities. Testing is proposed in two phases. First, each of the attainability components will be evaluated individually using regression analysis to test its relationship to attainability. Second, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is proposed to test the complex relationship of all four components simultaneously. Outcomes are anticipated to relate municipal mechanisms to MH attainability and support substantive and procedural municipal reform of the MH regulatory and policy environment.

4. Shadi Nazarian, Negar Ashrafi, and Gaurav Lunawat, Architecture

Title: Additive Manufacturing for Roof Structures: Improving Geometric Accuracy, Design Flexibility, and Strength

Traditional construction methods, such as cast-in-place and precast concrete, are constrained by formwork limitations, high costs, material waste, and labor-intensive processes, particularly for complex geometries. 3D concrete printing (3DCP) presents a transformative alternative, enabling customized fabrication without molds, reducing waste, and enhancing geometric precision. This research investigates the potential of 3DCP for fabricating multifaceted roof structures, focusing on its ability to streamline fabrication, enhance design flexibility, and improve geometric precision.

Additive manufacturing of concrete has advanced in the past two decades, enabling rapid, material-efficient construction. While early research concentrated on walls and load-bearing elements, roof structures remain a challenge due to their need for structural stability without conventional formwork. Optimized layer density and toolpath strategies improve load distribution and stiffness. In contrast, 3DCP offers a mold-free approach with precise geometric control, reducing material waste and construction time. However, limitations such as material inconsistencies, weak layer adhesion, and print variability hinder broader adoption.

A comparative experimental approach evaluates 3DCP roof structures against cast-in-place and precast methods. The study focuses on fabricating a sawtooth roof geometry, chosen for its common use in industrial buildings due to its passive cooling benefits and enhanced natural lighting. The parametrically designed roof modules feature three length variations (x, 2x, and x/2), a tapered wall profile, and an asymmetrical curved front-facing portion.

The findings highlight several advantages of 3DCP for roof structures. Design flexibility is significantly improved, as modifications in length, tapering, and curvature can be easily achieved without custom molds. The sawtooth geometry with integrated openings enhances ventilation, facilitating passive cooling and reducing heat buildup.

1. Shermeen Yousif, Architecture

Title: Speculative Ecologies: AI-Enabled Design Futures for North Texas Cities

North Texas stands at a moment of profound metropolitan transformation, where rapid growth, climate volatility, and infrastructural inequity collide with the need for intelligent, adaptive, and ecologically grounded architectural and urban strategies. This research positions generative artificial intelligence (AI), specifically large language models (LLMs) and deep learning tools trained on architectural, climatic, and socio-spatial datasets, as a catalytic medium for rethinking how cities can evolve without relying on extractive, tabula rasa interventions. Rather than deferring to demolition as the precondition for adaptation and renewal, the work argues for AI-enabled urban imagination that elevates adaptive reuse, micro-infrastructures, and ecological retrofitting as foundational design tactics for future metropolitan resilience.

The research engages the critical domains outlined in the symposium theme, particularly intelligent systems, climate adaptation, and green infrastructure. By leveraging AI systems and curating culturally and climatically situated training datasets, the project advances models capable of speculating on architectural interventions and urban transformations while remaining legible, inclusive, and ecologically grounded. These models allow designers to interrogate the latent potential of underutilized parcels, aging mid-century structures, parking garages, interstitial voids, and infrastructural edges, spaces often dismissed as liabilities, and recast them as ecological and cultural assets.

Three interrelated trajectories structure the research. First, speculative design as strategic provocation, in which AI synthesizes heterogeneous spatial data to propose unconventional yet plausible micro-urban interventions. These propositions illuminate pathways towards low-carbon morphologies, distributed green infrastructure, and new forms of civic space embedded within existing fabrics. Second, the research explores AI-augmented adaptive reuse tactics, where machine learning models analyze structural affordances and programmatic potentials across datasets of existing buildings. This enables the automated generation of vertical “plug-in” typologies, parasitic additions, and modular housing or co-working units that dock onto existing structures, offering scalable strategies for addressing housing shortages, mobility transitions, and energy retrofitting. Third, the project examines how AI can reframe urban morphologies by revealing alternative futures for residual and infrastructural spaces such as under-highway corridors, vacant storefronts, and fragmented parcels. Through scenario-building workflows, AI reprograms these micro-sites as ecologically performative commons, rainwater gardens, cooling corridors, micro-libraries, shade infrastructures, and community-scaled mobility hubs.

This work builds on several years of research at the intersection of AI and performance-driven design. A Spring 2026 studio focused on reimagining downtown Arlington, TX will serve as the primary test-case application. Students will employ generative deep learning models, geospatial data extraction, thermal and daylight simulations, and custom fine-tuning of AI models to develop speculative but performance-anchored proposals. Through AI-supported speculation and design iteration, students will envision futures in which Arlington emerges as a distributed, living ecology—adaptive, resilient, and socially attuned.

2. Shrutika Sandip Khamitkar & Atefe Makhmalbaf, Architecture

Title: Evolving Passive Cooling Strategies: From Vernacular Desert Architecture to Intelligent Sustainable Design for Urban Resilience

As North Texas continues to grow rapidly, rising temperatures and urban heat islands are placing pressure on designers to create energy-efficient, thermally comfortable, and climate-responsive environments. While the region’s warm-humid climate differs from the hot-dry conditions of traditional desert settlements, both share critical design challenges like heat mitigation, air movement, and human comfort in extreme climates.

This research explores how passive cooling strategies derived from vernacular desert architecture can inform modern intelligent sustainable design for resilient and adaptable urban environments, identifying transferable principles that bridge climatic differences. The research employs a comparative qualitative case study approach, analyzing two diverse yet conceptually connected examples: the Vernacular Houses of Yazd, Iran and Masdar City, in Abu Dhabi, UAE, designed by Foster + Partners. The Yazd houses selected include Houses of Karimi and House of Mashrootoh. These homes signify several centuries of adaptation to hot–arid conditions through passive systems such as windcatchers (badgirs), sunken courtyards, thick adobe walls, and seasonal zoning. These features use natural ventilation, evaporative cooling, and thermal mass to regulate temperature and create comfort without potential mechanical energy. In contrast, Masdar City stands out as a 21st-century reinterpretation of similar principles, using integrative passive strategies such as CFD-optimized wind towers, narrow shaded streets, double-skin facades, and photovoltaic canopies that minimize heat gain and energy consumption across an urban scale.

A comparative analysis revealed that despite differences in time and technology, both case studies share the same fundamental logic of environmental design solar orientation, compact spatial organization, airflow optimization, and material performance that buffer thermal extremes. Yazd achieves sustainability through empirical, low-tech design, whereas Masdar applies high-tech modeling, simulations, and renewable systems to achieve similar results. Published performance studies indicate that Yazd’s passive cooling strategies can reduce indoor temperatures by 8–16°C compared to outdoor conditions, while Masdar demonstrates 40–50% reductions in urban heat and energy demand relative to conventional Abu Dhabi developments. The discussion situates these findings within a broader sustainability dialogue, showing how vernacular architecture offers timeless lessons in climate adaptation and social resilience. The research illustrates how these traditional principles can guide modern metropolitan design in regions like North Texas, where strategies such as form-based zoning, shading, vegetated courtyards, and hybrid passive-active systems can enhance livability, reduce heat stress, and improve overall energy performance. Ultimately, this research invites reconsideration of traditional architectural wisdom through hybrid approaches, integrating vernacular knowledge with contemporary technology. It embodies the belief that true sustainability in urbanism does not lie so much in innovation but rather in reinterpreting ancient climatic intelligence through modern means and methods. By applying these principles, cities can evolve into resilient, intelligent, and human-centered ecosystems capable of thriving amidst climate change and rapid urbanization.

3. Vanessa Delgado, Public Affairs & Planning

Title: Planning for Maternal Health Equity: A Literature Review

While growing literature in public health and medicine highlights clear connections between the built environment and maternal health outcomes (Vinikoor-Imler et al., 2011), planning tools have largely failed to treat maternal health as a core concern. For example, the American Planning Association’s Healthy Communities Policy Guide, often used to integrate health into planning practice, does not mention maternal health at all. This gap is especially concerning in the midst of the maternal health crisis in the United States, where mortality rates are three times higher than in other high-income countries and recent policy changes have deepened inequities in reproductive care (Hoyert, 2021). Latina women face particularly acute barriers shaped by immigration status, poverty, racial discrimination, and geographic isolation, yet their experiences remain largely absent from planning discourse.

This proposal presents a literature review that synthesizes existing scholarship across planning, public health, and social science to address the following question: What are the key built environment factors, such as housing quality, transportation access, and neighborhood infrastructure, that contribute to maternal health outcomes among Latinas? By framing maternal health as a place-based and gendered issue, the review explores how planning scholarship has engaged these concerns and identifies where significant gaps remain. Rather than proposing immediate solutions, this literature review focuses on documenting spatial barriers and conceptual gaps within planning scholarship. By pulling together interdisciplinary findings, it argues that maternal health should be integrated more directly into planning tools, community-based strategies, and policy discussions. Broadly, this work encourages planners to view maternal health not solely as a health issue, but as a measure of spatial justice and community well-being, an essential consideration for shaping more equitable, healthy metropolitan futures.

4. Wei Zhai, Public Affairs & Planning

Title: AI-based Home Sensing for Community Resilience in Texas

Texas communities, particularly low-income urban and historically marginalized peri-urban settlements, face significant housing and environmental risks exacerbated by extreme heat and structural inequities. In San Antonio’s Westside, homes are often over 80 years old, built before modern energy codes, and lack proper insulation and ventilation, leading to high indoor temperatures, which is intensified by the urban heat island effect. Simultaneously, in Sand Branch, Dallas County, the lack of incorporation status perpetuates environmental injustice, resulting in chronic outdoor challenges like extreme heat, air pollution, and non-potable water access, alongside critical knowledge gaps regarding the indoor environmental risks of informal housing (RVs, mobile homes, and regular structures). These conditions across the state directly shape thermal comfort, air quality, and household energy use, highlighting a pervasive problem of energy insecurity and housing informality in underserved communities.

The work pioneers the indoor sensing of housing informality to make these invisible risks measurable and actionable. The methodology is structured around two interdisciplinary objectives. The first objective is to Assess Environmental Vulnerabilities in Informal Housing. This involves a comprehensive participatory sensing protocol where residents collaborate with researchers to collect real-time indoor/outdoor data using low-cost environmental sensors (like PurpleAir) and professional-grade 3D scanning equipment, including the Insta360 Pro II and mobile LiDAR. This data is used to create AI-based digital twins of six homes, capturing detailed geometry and structural anomalies. This technical work is grounded by applying physics-based building performance models to quantify the drivers of energy inefficiency, energy insecurity, and poor air quality under existing conditions and various hypothetical retrofit scenarios.

The second objective is to Co-Design a Participatory Upgrade Toolkit for Resilience. This objective is driven by community engagement through participatory co-learning workshops. Researcher and residents will collaboratively interpret the sensor data and model outputs to define vulnerabilities and co-design effective indoor retrofit strategies that improve comfort and mitigate heat and pollution. The final output is a participatory upgrade toolkit, which provides practical advice for low-cost home improvements, incorporates contextual data like energy efficiency mapping, and provides clear guidance on how to apply for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Weatherization Assistance Program. The anticipated deliverables also include a comprehensive policy brief and visual report recommending data-driven upgrade strategies for informal and energy-insecure homes. By creating digital models and co-designing low-cost fixes with residents, this project moves the focus from just documenting poverty to empowering the community's resilience. The resulting data and policy brief will immediately help local advocacy in North Texas and serve as a model for similar settlements.

1. Deden Rukmana & Samyuktha Sarvanan, Public Affairs & Planning

Title: From Campus to Community: Planning Strategies to Retain UT Arlington Graduates in the City of Arlington

This research examines how comprehensive planning can enhance the relationship between the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) and the City of Arlington by focusing on strategies to retain graduates in the local community. Utilizing a mixed-methods survey of UTA students, the research explores their aspirations, perceptions of Arlington’s livability, and the factors influencing their choices regarding where to live after graduation. The findings will inform the City of Arlington’s Comprehensive Plan Update by identifying policies and initiatives—such as affordable housing, job opportunities, urban amenities, and civic engagement programs—that can encourage graduates to live, work, and build their futures in Arlington. Ultimately, this project aims to bridge the gap between campus and community, aligning educational outcomes with the city’s long-term vision for economic vitality and inclusive growth.

2. Dennis Chiessa, Julia Lindgren, Grant Leevy, Jonathan Horstman, Architecture

Title: 76104 Visioning a Healthy City: Neighborhood Interventions for a Longer Life Expectancy

Zip code 76104, located just south of downtown Fort Worth, has the lowest life expectancy in Texas—67 years, nearly a decade shorter than the state average. This disparity is not accidental; it reflects generations of policy and infrastructural decisions that divided communities, restricted opportunity, and shaped environmental conditions.

Visioning a Healthy City reframes this challenge as a design question. Developed in collaboration with BRAVE/R Together, a local community organization, the project proposes a neighborhood-scale framework that links health equity to the physical environment. It translates public-health data into spatial strategies that improve air quality, mobility, food access, housing, and long-term stewardship.

The plan introduces five catalytic interventions:

1. Highway Filter – a vegetated barrier along I-35 that reduces air and noise pollution.
2. Wellness Trail – a connected system of walking and biking paths linking parks, schools, and civic amenities.
3. Productive Alleys – by using underutilized alleys in the neighborhoods for urban farming and community spaces, this network of micro-agricultural corridors and community kitchens expands access to healthy food and neighborhood gathering spaces.
4. Renovation Reserve – changes existing mechanisms that collect revenue from new developments on behalf of the city into one that directs those funds back into the community. It encourages higher-density development in targeted areas and returns resources to existing residents who need them most.
5. 100-Year Lot – a flexible infill prototype for multi-generational living and long-term adaptability.

Together, these interventions strengthen the physical, social, and environmental systems that sustain daily life in 76104. Rather than replacing what exists, they amplify the neighborhood’s enduring resilience—advancing both individual health and collective vitality. In 76104, design becomes a form of public health: a way to extend lives, strengthen community, and imagine a more equitable future built from the fabric already in place.

Architectural education emphasizes individual achievement and studio immersion, which implicitly casts family responsibilities, job, and community commitments as distractions from design success. For first-generation Latinas, these are critical sources of strength, identity development, and design knowledge. This paper is a call to action, drawn from an ongoing asset-based dissertation study on the lived experience of nine first-generation Latina graduates in architecture. It investigates how their perceptions of Identity, Sense of Belonging, and Community Cultural Wealth inform their academic journey. Addressing an absence of research on Latinas' lived experience in architectural education, early findings suggest an expansion of cultural capital, where they were able to transform familial obligations, caregiving roles, and community ties into design capital. This process of transformation supported their persistence in higher education and shaped their vision of architectural practice.

As North Texas faces rapid population growth and widening socioeconomic gaps, equitable representation in the design workforce is critical to creating human-centered, resilient cities.

Findings of this study reveal that first-generation Latinas carry unique cultural, familial, and emotional knowledge that strengthens community-centered design, especially for underserved populations. By cultivating this talent pipeline, architectural education directly contributes to a more just and empathetic future metropolis.

Recommendations offered can enrich pedagogy, increase a sense of belonging, and cultivate future practitioners whose identities represent the communities our profession is intended to serve.

“Visit the center of Arlington, Texas, and you won’t have trouble finding a parking space. You will have trouble finding anything else, because parking space takes up no less than 39% of the city center.”

For the CAPPA Research & Creative Works Symposium, I propose to present selected works from students’ design studio projects from their mandatory course ARCH 3553. The project envisions versatile futures for Downtown Arlington. Both Arlington and the greater DFW region exemplify what can be described as an asphalt city—a landscape dominated by vacant lots, surface parking, and paved voids that hinder urban vitality and spatial continuity. The selected studio site for Fall 2025 (ARCH 3553) is a surface parking lot located at the corner of West Front Street and North Center Street in Downtown Arlington. Currently serving as a parking facility and a weekly farmers' market site, the space is bounded by a freight rail line on one side. The overarching goal of this studio is to explore the transformation of contemporary urban spaces, particularly those that are vacant, residual, or underutilized, and to question how they might be reimagined as catalysts for social and ecological regeneration.

Through this lens, the studio investigates Arlington’s overlooked sites that, despite their marginality, hold immense potential for creative intervention. Collectively, the DDRA= {DE}nsify + {DE}Pave + {RE}Think Arlington (DDRA) engages with themes of placelessness, identity erosion, and socio-racial segregation, aiming to reimagine the city through architectural proposals, address permanent and temporal issues that operate across scales and typologies. In response to Arlington’s urban challenges, students propose hybrid architectural forms that emphasize spatial multiplicity, adaptability, and resilience. Students design ideas were supported by Arlington Downtown BID, a well Arlington Planning. Their ides were shaped by cross disciplinary expert- from Planning and Engineering. Their work seeks to reinterpret underused sites as generative environments capable of accommodating regional growth while fostering civic life and environmental responsiveness. As a part of the studio, students also address technical challenges of building suited to dense urban contexts, grounding their speculative visions in material and structural feasibility. These projects can also be models of future Texan cities and be emulated in other areas in North Texas region. This project also aims to be the beginning of a design idea not a one-solution project.

1. Ariadna Reyes Sanchez, Julene Paul, & Josh Newton, Public Affairs & Planning

Title: Transport Poverty and Employment Outcomes in a Dallas Unincorporated Community

In the last few decades, underserved unincorporated communities have proliferated in the urban periphery of the U.S. (Durst et al. 2021; Reyes et al. 2024). Yet few studies have examined how transport poverty influence employment outcomes. To bridge this gap in the literature, we draw on data from four years of fieldwork in Sand Branch, Texas. Sand Branch is an unincorporated subdivision located in Dallas County about 20 miles from downtown Dallas. Sand Branch resembles other underserved unincorporated communities in the US, as it lacks municipal infrastructure such as running water, sewage systems, public transit, paved roads, and sidewalks (Durst 2019). Yet, a unique social context distinguishes Sand Branch from other unincorporated areas. In addition to long-time African American residents, more recently people have migrated to Sand Branch from Latin America and other parts of the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) region. Most new arrivals cite the benefits of low land costs and homeownership opportunities that Sand Branch offers as their reason for moving to the community.

To address the relationship between transport poverty and employment outcomes in this unique context, we surveyed 75 Sand Branch residents about their household resources, levels of automobile access, travel behavior, and employment status. These surveys capture data on 76 percent of the occupied lots in Sand Branch and 80 percent of residents. Our data address two central research questions: alongside automobile ownership, do broader social disadvantage factors—including previous institutionalization, race and ethnicity, citizenship status, health status, housing tenure, and social capital—influence transport poverty and employment outcomes for individuals in peripheral unincorporated communities? If so, how?

We find that despite the poverty of Sand Branch, most residents had access to a working automobile, highlighting the necessity of automobility in the region. However, many workers in Sand Branch limited their work travel to relatively nearby locations due to the cost burdens of operating cars. Further, our research reveals the pervasiveness of informal employment, which in the case of Sand Branch consists of poorly paid jobs that did not offer regular. Although we predicted a strong relationship between auto access, it was less important than other social factors such as immigration status, a history of institutionalization, and social connections. This raises questions about the role of spatial access in determining the employment outcomes of peri-urban workers in the U.S., including ones living close to a large and economically strong metropolitan area. Beyond their relationship with employment, however, we find that the lack of transportation options – both in terms of public transit and active travel infrastructure – left Sand Branch residents burdened by automobile costs and restricted their access. This study highlights the need for practitioners to comprehensively and creatively address peri-urban unincorporated travel needs. US transport poverty can learn from the solutions and policies implemented in other areas of Global North and particularly in the Global South where peri-urban communities are widely studied (Furszyfer Del Rio et al. 2023; 2024).

2. Ayushi Mavuduru, Architecture

Title: Bus Transit-Oriented Design for a More Equitable Trinity Metro System in Fort Worth, Texas

 In the past decade, Fort Worth’s Trinity Metro has seen declining bus ridership, with transportation planning efforts directed towards car-centric and commuter rail-based development. This two-part research project and design proposal explores how Bus Transit Oriented Design (BTOD) can improve quality of life for low income and minority transit-dependent riders, while also attracting choice ridership to displace car usage. This project begins with an evaluation of the Trinity Metro bus system and culminates in a parking reclamation proposal at the Vickery Boulevard Park and Ride, south of Texas and Pacific Station in Fort Worth. As an interdisciplinary sustained investigation, this proposal for Bus Transit Oriented design in Fort Worth designs for a future Metropolis with respect to both regional systems and integration by proposing an urban design intervention to connect bus, rail, rideshare, and biking; and community centered placemaking in the form of a thriving urban park and transit village.

The first aspect of this proposal takes a transportation planning approach to the challenge of declining quality of essential bus services in favor of commuter rail. The literature review highlights best practices to overcome the challenges of suburban BTOD implementation in Fort Worth, with comparable case studies in Fruitvale, California, and Redmond, Washington. The mobility assessment evaluates eight Trinity Metro locations using quantitative and qualitative analysis of performance and built environment attributes in relation to demographic characteristics. This mobility assessment reveals greater deficiencies in the bus-supporting infrastructure of low-ridership locations but suggests that both affluent and impoverished neighborhoods face unfavorable built environment conditions for buses.

The disparities between two neighboring transit sites: Texas and Pacific Station, and the Vickery Boulevard Park and Ride, north and south of I-30 respectively, emerge as an immediate growth opportunity for the Trinity Metro System. Divided by I-30, Texas and Pacific Station is sited in an affluent census tract with extensive investment in transit infrastructure, while the Southside neighborhood in which the Vickery Boulevard bus loop is located has been neglected and underserved until recent years. Though the two transit centers are linked through an underground tunnel, low visibility, poor lighting, and both air and noise pollution from I-30 hinder the connectivity between bus and rail at these locations.

Overarching regional design recommendations for all eight sites apply existing Fort Worth TOD and complete street proposals to four underperforming locations, while policy solutions call for improved public engagement and an expanded funding strategy including federal funding under the Justice 40 initiative. In the design phase of this proposal, these recommendations were further developed from an architectural lens to propose a thriving public space that improves the perception and safety of bus infrastructure, while effectively integrating it with rail, rideshare, and bike share. The design proposal includes small-scale “pop up” retail space, a terraced activity zone, green bike trail, bicycle repair facility, Trinity Metro bus layover space, Zipzone rideshare hub, and employee facilities. Overall, this project aims to integrate transit modes and foster connectivity between residents of the metroplex.

Reliable transportation plays a critical role in ensuring healthcare access for vulnerable populations, referring to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries who often face socioeconomic barriers and may have functional limitations (Flynn et al., 2021; Wolfe et al., 2020). Public transit facilitates this access, particularly for individuals without private vehicles (Jin et al., 2022). Assessing healthcare accessibility via public transit helps identify spatial inequities contributing to delayed care and poor health outcomes (Jin et al., 2022; Wolfe et al., 2020). Spatial inequities can be defined as avoidable or remediable differences in the geographic distribution of opportunities to access healthcare services among different groups(Jin et al., 2022).

Studies globally highlight transportation's crucial role in healthcare accessibility, revealing disparities for vulnerable groups. For example, low-income individuals in Shanghai, those with disabilities and poor mental health in Toronto, and older adults in Ghana experience significant transportation barriers (Jin et al., 2022; Lyeo et al., 2023; Oduro Appiah et al., 2020). However, research is limited on how transit impacts healthcare access for publicly insured populations within U.S. metropolitan areas (Jin et al., 2022; Lyeo et al., 2023). This study seeks to understand how public transit influences healthcare access for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries in the DFW region by addressing two key questions: (1) How does geographic location shape the experience of transportation barriers to healthcare? and (2) How are socioeconomic factors, such as insurance type, income level, and age, associated with the prevalence and type of transportation-related barriers?

This study will employ network-based spatial accessibility analysis within a Geographic Information System (GIS) framework to evaluate healthcare access via public transit for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries in the Dallas–Fort Worth (DFW) metropolitan area. Building on methods proposed by Luo & Wang (2003) and Liu et al. (2022), the analysis emphasizes travel time impedance rather than simple distance, capturing the real-world complexity of public transportation. Using digital transit data, including routes, schedules, and stop locations, the study will apply a time-dependent shortest path algorithm (e.g., Dijkstra’s) to estimate minimum travel times between residential locations and healthcare facilities (Jin et al., 2022). Accessibility calculations will integrate factors such as walking distances to transit stops, waiting times, transfer penalties, and, in some cases, real-time delays, enhancing accuracy beyond schedule-based models (Liu et al., 2022). Accessibility will be measured using the Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) method, which jointly considers healthcare provider capacity and demand within travel-time catchments of 30, 45, and 60 minutes (Jin et al., 2022; Chen et al., 2023). This method will incorporate public transit travel times and healthcare provider capacity, making it ideal for identifying spatial access disparities among transit-dependent populations. The unit of analysis will be the census tract, using data sources that include GTFS transit feeds from DART, healthcare provider data from CMS, and demographic and socioeconomic variables from the American Community Survey (ACS).

1. Lorena Toffer, Architecture

Title: La Esperanza Community Center: Transforming a vacant school into a community hub through design, diversity, and collaboration

La Esperanza Community Center was a collaborative initiative focused on the adaptive reuse of a former elementary school in Dallas, Texas. Rooted in environmental justice and community cultural wealth, the project intentionally wove together diverse perspectives: university students and faculty, high school youth, civic leaders, nonprofit organizations, professional mentors, and neighborhood residents, to reimagine the vacant school as a hub integrating education, wellness, cultural programming, and economic opportunity.

The project was grounded in the multicultural richness of its context. The neighborhood is over 70% Hispanic, and the participating school district is one of the most diverse in the nation, with no single racial or ethnic majority. This diversity of lived experiences, languages, and cultural traditions shaped design outcomes and created an inclusive pipeline from high school to higher education and, ultimately, to the profession. Students engaged in discussions on environmental justice, rarely addressed in traditional curricula, which deepened their cultural competence, emotional intelligence, and expanded their understanding of design as civic responsibility.

Through interdisciplinary workshops, design charrettes, reflective practices, and public presentations, students gained professional and civic skills. High school students participated as “community experts” (some live in La Esperanza and/or attended the now closed elementary), while undergraduate students acted as mentors and emerging professionals. Architects, planners, and engineers contributed as reviewers and advisors, creating a professional setting that challenged students to synthesize technical rigor. This cross-generational, cross-sector collaboration produced design solutions that no single group could have achieved alone.

The outcomes extended across multiple levels: students gained agency, confidence, and professional preparation; the community received visionary yet grounded proposals; and the university strengthened its mission as a leader in equity-centered education. La Esperanza demonstrates how diversity in people, disciplines, and curriculum can transform spaces of disinvestment into hubs of belonging and opportunity.

2. Mateo Guio, Keilah Elliot, Kevin Nguyen, Architecture

Title: Bay Court

 Coastal territories are undergoing accelerated transformation under the pressures of climate change, including sea level rise, storm surge intensification, and increased tidal volatility. These forces are destabilizing urbanized shorelines and exposing critical infrastructural vulnerabilities. Along the Texas Gulf Coast—and particularly within the Corpus Christi Bay Area—rapid subsidence, saline intrusion, and hydrological imbalances have rendered conventional development models obsolete. The region exemplifies the urgent need for adaptive frameworks that can reconcile habitation with a continuously shifting littoral environment, where static ground conditions are no longer viable design assumptions.

In response, the discipline must advance new architectural and urban typologies that integrate ecological performance with human occupation. Traditional land-based paradigms, reliant on impermeable surfaces and rigid spatial hierarchies, fail to accommodate hydrodynamic variability. Instead, design must evolve toward amphibious, gradient-based systems capable of negotiating periodic inundation, distributing loads across adaptive terrains, and embedding resilience as a spatial and material logic. Architecture becomes an instrument of environmental mediation—operating between terrestrial and marine systems rather than in opposition to them.

Through a co-creative and transdisciplinary design process, Project Bay Court establishes a climate-responsive typology providing elevated housing on stilts as a replicable prototype for flood-adaptive urbanism. The project integrates structural elevation with hydrological permeability, reinterpreting the stilt house as a modular and infrastructurally networked unit within a larger ecological matrix. Elevated residential clusters are interconnected through permeable ground planes, bio-retentive corridors, and collective platforms that function alternately as social spaces and flood-adaptive surfaces. The structural system employs composite materials optimized for corrosion resistance and load distribution, while the landscape operates as a dynamic water management field capable of absorption, filtration, and tidal exchange.

Situated within the Corpus Christi Bay Area, Bay Court performs as both a resilient housing model and a regional ecological catalyst. It consolidates adaptive density, mitigates flood exposure, and reconstitutes degraded coastal habitats. By merging infrastructural efficiency with ecological intelligence, the project fosters socio-environmental resilience and articulates a new syntax for living with water.

Ultimately, Bay Court reframes architecture as an adaptive interface—transforming vulnerability into performance and advancing a scalable paradigm for climate-positive coastal habitation.

3. Jackie Vuong, Reagan Smith, Randall Alejandro, Architecture

Title: Resilient Archipelago: Upcycling Dredge Material to Co-create Habitable Islands

 Coastal regions globally face unprecedented threats from climate change, including sea-level rise, increased storm surge, and chronic flooding. These escalating risks expose the vulnerability of traditional coastal infrastructure and urban settlements, demanding a fundamental shift in how we design and inhabit our shorelines.

This new reality necessitates a move beyond conventional, hard-engineered defenses. We must develop innovative architectural and urban typologies that are adaptive, resilient, and integrated with natural systems. These new models must address environmental risk while simultaneously enhancing social, economic, and ecological value.

Through a co-creative design process, the Resilient Archipelago project emerges as a climate-responsive typology to meet this challenge. This concept uniquely addresses a major regional liability—abundant dredge material—by upcycling it to co-create a series of new, habitable islands. This "Habitable Archipelago" is engineered to be resilient and functional, turning a waste product into a valuable asset.

For the Corpus Christi Bay area, this project performs as a crucial addition. The engineered islands will provide essential flood mitigation and wave buffering for the vulnerable downtown, directly addressing chronic flood risk. More than just defense, they create a vibrant new urban fabric, hosting sustainable housing and dynamic public spaces. This typology offers an integrated solution to the area's intertwined problems of aging infrastructure and commercial vacancy, establishing a new, resilient civic center to revitalize the adjacent mainland economy.

Ultimately, the Resilient Archipelago redefines what is possible for coastal adaptation. It provides a scalable model for other vulnerable cities, demonstrating how urban-scale liabilities can be transformed into a thriving, resilient, and integrated part of the city’s living environment.

4. Tongbin Qu, Kacy Gray, Amanda Maloch, Landscape Architecture

Title: Designing the Future Metropolis: Community-Centered, Intelligent, and Resilient Mobility Solutions in Downtown Arlington

 The theme “Designing the Future Metropolis: Community-Centered, Intelligent, and Resilient Solutions for a Thriving North Texas” captures the essence of how future cities must evolve—balancing growth, sustainability, and inclusivity through thoughtful urban design. The Downtown Arlington Parking and Mobility Project, undertaken by third-year Sustainable Urban Design students, exemplifies this vision by reimagining mobility systems that prioritize people, technology, and long-term community resilience.

The project’s primary goal is to design a comprehensive and adaptive mobility and parking strategy for downtown Arlington—an area poised for rapid transformation due to ongoing redevelopment, increased tourism, and expanding university and cultural activities. Using a data-driven, context-sensitive approach, students assessed the existing mobility infrastructure, identified critical deficiencies, and explored strategies to make parking and transportation more efficient, accessible, and environmentally sustainable.

Through on-the-ground data collection, students mapped existing parking facilities, observed utilization patterns during peak hours, and assessed walking distances, street connectivity, and accessibility for all users. The analysis revealed a common urban challenge—imbalanced parking supply and demand, fragmented enforcement policies, and an underutilization of shared mobility and multimodal systems. Instead of defaulting to conventional “more parking” solutions, the student teams critically questioned whether new policies, technologies, or behavioral strategies could achieve more sustainable outcomes.

In alignment with the “intelligent metropolis” framework, students integrated emerging smart technologies such as real-time parking data systems, mobile payment applications, and sensor-based occupancy tracking to enhance user experience and operational efficiency. These solutions not only improve parking management but also support data-informed policy decisions. The introduction of digital tools exemplifies how smart city principles can be locally implemented to create responsive and adaptable urban systems.

The project also reflects community-centered design. Students engaged with downtown stakeholders—including local businesses, city staff, and university representatives—to understand diverse mobility needs. Their proposals balanced commercial access, pedestrian comfort, and equitable transportation options. Strategies such as shared parking agreements, improved pedestrian connectivity, and adjustments to time-limited on-street parking demonstrate how design decisions can directly enhance downtown livability and economic vitality.

From a resiliency perspective, the proposals considered long-term adaptability amid changing travel behaviors, environmental challenges, and technological shifts. By incorporating green infrastructure elements—such as permeable paving, shade trees, and electric vehicle charging stations—the designs address both mobility efficiency and environmental performance. Moreover, cost-benefit analyses and feasibility studies prepared by the students introduced fiscal responsibility into the planning process, recognizing that resilient systems must also be financially sustainable.

Ultimately, this student-led project illustrates how the next generation of urban designers can contribute meaningfully to North Texas’s evolution toward a thriving, intelligent metropolis.

5. Tobias Maiden, Jacqueline Garcia-Hernandez, Architecture

Title: Linking Park: A Floating Community Resilience Hub

 Coastal regions are increasingly destabilized by the compounded effects of climate change, including sea-level rise, intensified cyclonic activity, and coastal subsidence. These forces are reshaping littoral ecologies and undermining conventional infrastructural systems. In regions such as the Corpus Christi Bay area, where economic, cultural, and ecological networks are tightly interwoven with the marine environment, these disturbances manifest as both environmental degradation and socio-economic precarity. As hydrodynamic fluctuations accelerate, there is a critical imperative to reconceptualize the built environment as adaptive, performative, and ecologically synergistic rather than static and defensive.

This condition necessitates the development of new architectural and urban typologies that integrate environmental adaptability, socio-economic resilience, and ecological regeneration. Conventional shoreline fortification and fixed-edge infrastructure have proven insufficient against the dynamic and non-linear behaviors of coastal systems. Future-oriented coastal design must engage amphibious strategies—floating, modular, and self-regulating architectures capable of interfacing directly with aquatic environments. Such systems must simultaneously support habitation, economic productivity, and ecological recovery while maintaining operational continuity under variable climatic stressors.

Emerging from a transdisciplinary and co-creative design framework, Linking Park: A Floating Community Resilience Hub establishes a climate-responsive architectural prototype that unifies socio-economic activation and ecological restoration. Conceived as a modular buoyant platform, the project accommodates tourism programs, micro-enterprise zones, aquaculture, and public gathering spaces while providing an adaptive buffer against flooding. Its hydrodynamically stabilized modules are engineered for incremental expansion, allowing spatial reconfiguration according to seasonal, ecological, and demographic shifts. Embedded environmental technologies—such as biofiltration wetlands, oyster reef cultivation, and photovoltaic integration—enhance ecosystem services, water quality, and energy autonomy.

Situated within the Corpus Christi Bay system, Linking Park functions as an infrastructural catalyst, reinforcing regional resilience through hybridization of ecological and economic networks. It provides a multifunctional urban interface that mediates between human activity and marine processes, while serving as a refuge and resource hub during storm events. By reintroducing biodiversity-supportive structures and fostering community engagement, the project redefines the bayfront as an adaptive socio-ecological corridor.

Ultimately, Linking Park advances a paradigm of amphibious urbanism—one where architecture, ecology, and community operate as interdependent systems. Through its technical innovation and environmental intelligence, the project demonstrates how floating infrastructures can transform coastal vulnerability into regenerative potential.6.

6. Frances Walker & Eylul Cetinkanat, Architecture

Title: Delta Pier: A Looping Urban Landscape Above the Bay

Delta Pier is situated within a rapidly transforming coastal environment where the effects of climate change are increasingly evident. Rising sea levels, stronger storm systems, and recurrent tidal flooding are now defining conditions along many waterfront cities, particularly those located on the Gulf Coast. In Corpus Christi, these challenges are intensified by site-specific vulnerabilities such as shoreline erosion, land subsidence, and continuous wave activity generated by commercial shipping and coastal winds. These combined stressors destabilize the bay-edge, disrupt ecological systems, and threaten existing public infrastructure. Traditional ground-based development and rigid coastal defenses have proven insufficient for managing these dynamic hydrological pressures, demonstrating the need for new adaptive design strategies capable of operating within an evolving coastal landscape.

In this context, new architectural and urban typologies are required—typologies that operate above fluctuating water levels and incorporate adaptive stilted frameworks. Elevated structures, permeable foundations, and hybrid ecological–structural systems allow development to anticipate inundation, dissipate wave energy, and maintain continuous functionality during storm events. These approaches shift waterfront planning away from rigid resistance strategies toward integrated, adaptive, and regenerative urban infrastructures.

Through a co-creative design methodology involving environmental engineers, city stakeholders, and community participants, Delta Pier emerges as a refined climate-responsive typology. Raised on a stilted structural system, the project is engineered to accommodate periodic flooding, manage water retention within integrated basins, and function as a distributed wave-breaker through its porous understructure. Programmatically, the pier incorporates a market hall positioned at the site’s entrance to anchor economic activity; a hotel designed to meet overflow lodging demands during peak tourism seasons and large civic events; an amphitheater oriented toward the bay to host cultural programming and optimize views; and a two-level landscape network connected by an elevated pedestrian walkway that enhances community mobility, recreation, and wellbeing.

Within the Corpus Christi bay area, Delta Pier functions as a multifunctional urban extension that reinforces resilience while expanding public access to the waterfront. Its elevated circulation routes remain operable during high-water conditions, the hotel and market hall activate year-round economic engagement, and the amphitheater introduces a flexible venue aligned with regional cultural growth.

In conclusion, Delta Pier demonstrates how stilted, hybrid coastal infrastructures can integrate public amenities, ecological performance, and adaptive engineering, serving as a replicable model for future climate-resilient waterfront development.

7. Belen Butragueno Diaz-Guerra, Architecture

Title: Rethinking Tomorrow’s Metropolis Through the Lens of Utopian Experiments

This research presents a teaching experience developed in a first-year architecture course designed to introduce students to spatial thinking and graphic language. The course brings students into architectural conversations through the visionary urban experiments of the 1960s and 1970s by groups such as Archigram, Archizoom, Metabolists or Yona Friedman. These collectives responded to rapid urbanization, the rise of private transportation, technological optimism, and frustration with the limits of modernist planning. These issues closely mirror those seen today in metropolitan regions like Metroplex. Their projects proposed new models for living in increasingly dense cities and challenged dominant postwar urban frameworks. Archigram imagined mobile, plug-in megastructures; Archizoom developed the anti-hierarchical No-Stop City and the Metabolists introduced expandable, organic systems. Together, these precedents frame the city as open, dynamic, and negotiable, supporting the emphasis on modular abstraction, shared authorship, and flexible spatial systems.

The main project, Spatial Canopy, is based on Yona Friedman’s Spatial City (1958). Friedman’s work plays a central role in the course because of its conceptual clarity and suitability for early architectural training. Its simple formal language, paired with a strong theoretical foundation, makes it accessible to first-year students. Spatial City reconceives the urban environment as an elevated, adaptable framework supported by pilotis, enabling residents to shape and modify their surroundings independently of centralized control. Its focus on flexibility, modularity, and user-led transformation positions the city as an evolving system rather than a static composition. These ideas are often described as utopian, but they resonate with current discussions about sustainability, resilience, and citizen agency.

The project begins with students designing a city module using basic geometric operations and principles from Gestalt theory, which explains how the mind organizes visual information into unified wholes. After defining this geometry, students shift to an urban scale to explore abstract configurations for a city. Following Friedman’s framework, their proposals include two primary components: a stereotomic base and a tectonic canopy. A key part of the assignment involves defining the spatial relationship between these layers and testing different arrangements of the grid. The work concludes with the collaborative construction of a large-scale model, developed in teams to foster negotiation, shared decision-making, and a common architectural language that reinforces the coherence of the collective proposal.

Students were also encouraged to create narratives that added meaning and unity to their designs. Many drew from dystopian references in contemporary visual culture, such as 1984, Fahrenheit 451 or Blade Runner. These enriched the symbolic dimension of the project and helped them understand the links between form, concept, and storytelling, while they showed a strong level of engagement with the design process.

Finally, the project offers a way to reflect on specific urban dynamics in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States. It focuses on modular systems, layered structures, and coordinated spatial strategies that gives students analytical tools that can inform future design proposals aligned with Metroplex’s development.

8. Monica Maldonado-Griego & Steven Flores, Architecture

Title: The Living Tree - “Rooted in history, growing toward resilience."

AI Integration Framework; AI as Design Partner

Artificial Intelligence was integrated not as a replacement for human creativity but as a collaborative design partner, augmenting analysis, visualization, and iteration. The Living Tree utilized AI to synthesize contextual, environmental, and architectural intelligence, bridging data-driven decision-making with human intuition.

AI Tools and Process: The design incorporated a multi-platform AI ecosystem, including Midjourney, xFigura, and custom LoRA-trained models. These were developed across six passive-design categories:

1. Atrium Elevations
2. Green Roof Elevations
3. Courtyard Floor Plans
4. Green Space Floor Plans
5. Shading Device Sections
6. Terrace Sections

Each LoRA model was trained using project-specific imagery derived from the Elm Street site, integrating ecological and architectural precedents with the design’s modular logic. This enabled AI to act as a generative extension of site intelligence producing outputs evaluated through a weighted matrix measuring:

• Representation Fidelity (25%)
• Passive Strategy Clarity (30%)
• Compositional Readability (15%)
• 3D Derivability (15%)
• Modularity/Scalability (15%)

Data-Driven Evolution

AI outputs were not treated as final renderings but as iterative datasets guiding the project’s spatial, material, and ecological strategies:

• xFigura AI assisted in training LoRA models from data sets collected through Xfigura and Midjourney. I aided in the evolution of the building mass, optimizing modular stacking and solar orientation. Through automated parametric evolution, testing volumetric relationships, solar orientation, and airflow potential. This massing produced through AI-driven optimization was then exported into Rhino, where the design evolved through human-guided form finding, structural articulation, and material logic.
• Midjourney visualized material atmospheres and micro-ecologies.
• LoRA models translated passive strategies into sectional, plan, and elevation logic, enabling a feedback loop between image generation, physical modeling, and performance testing.

This AI–human dialogue established a feedback loop between speculative visualization and technical execution, merging creative synthesis with environmental intelligence.

Intelligent Systems Integration

Beyond visualization, AI informed the building’s operational intelligence:

• Predictive climate modeling and occupancy pattern learning informed natural ventilation and lighting behavior.
• AI-assisted modular configuration tools simulated adaptive growth allowing units and community programs to evolve over time.
• Performance dashboards visualize environmental data, allowing residents to interact with and co-manage building systems, reinforcing The Living Tree’s concept as a living, learning organism.

Synthesis

Through this process, The Living Tree becomes not only an ecological and architectural ecosystem but also a digital ecology where AI and human intelligence collaborate to regenerate, adapt, and grow.

Wave Port is a climate-adaptive, multimodal transportation hub designed to strengthen the resilience and connectivity of the Corpus Christi Bay area in the face of intensifying climate pressures. As coastal cities increasingly experience sea-level rise, storm surge, and chronic flooding, critical infrastructures such as airports, ports, and transit corridors face operational and structural vulnerabilities. Corpus Christi’s coastal geography—where aviation, maritime, and terrestrial systems intersect—requires an integrated, elevated, and adaptive solution that ensures continuity of mobility, safety, and emergency access under extreme environmental conditions.

Conceived through a co-creative design process involving architects, engineers, ecologists, and transportation authorities, Wave Port introduces a stilt-based architectural typology that merges transportation infrastructure with climate-responsive performance. Elevated on deep pile foundations engineered to resist hydrodynamic forces, the structure remains operational during flood and storm events. Its modular framework accommodates boat docking, electric charging stations, and pedestrian corridors while maintaining a functional link to the nearby Mustang Beach Airport. This direct connection establishes a coordinated land, sea, and air rescue network, allowing for continuous evacuation, supply delivery, and emergency response during high-water or storm conditions.

The project’s design integrates a green and solar roof system that enhances environmental efficiency and self-sufficiency. Vegetated roof zones act as biofiltration layers, managing stormwater runoff and improving thermal regulation, while photovoltaic panels generate renewable energy for transit operations, communication, and emergency systems. During flooding, the elevated decks serve as secure evacuation routes and coordination platforms, supported by vertical refuge zones, emergency access ramps, and drone stations for aerial operations.

Situated strategically along the Corpus Christi Bay, Wave Port functions as a resilient mobility hub and a coastal defense mechanism. It enhances regional connectivity between maritime, terrestrial, and aviation systems while reinforcing the city’s adaptive capacity against rising seas and severe weather. Beyond its infrastructural role, Wave Port establishes a new precedent for coastal urbanism—one that combines transportation, ecology, and climate resilience into an integrated, high-performance system. By transforming a vulnerable shoreline into a multi-layered operational landscape, Wave Port redefines the Gulf Coast’s approach to sustainable and adaptive infrastructure.

Climate Change in Coastal Regions Coastal cities like Corpus Christi are facing increasing vulnerability from sea-level rise, intensified storms, and chronic flooding, threats that challenge not only infrastructure but the very identity of waterfront life. Once celebrated as a place of recreation and economy, the shoreline has become a zone of risk and retreat. As climate change continues to reshape coastlines, new design approaches are needed to transform these fragile thresholds into resilient, living systems that embrace rather than resist water. The Need for New Typologies, Traditional coastal developments, reliant on hard barriers and fixed foundations, no longer suffice. The future of coastal living depends on reimagining architecture and urbanism as adaptive, floating, and regenerative. New typologies must integrate hydrological dynamics, ecological restoration, and community resilience, enabling human settlements to coexist with changing natural rhythms rather than defy them.

A Climate-Responsive Typology Through a co-creative design process, Island Park emerges as a climate-responsive typology that both absorbs environmental change and restores ecological balance. The project envisions a resilient residential peninsula where floating homes rise and fall with the tides, transforming risk into renewal. The surrounding park operates as a living infrastructure; an absorbent green landscape that mitigates flooding, filters stormwater, and provides public gathering spaces for recreation and cultural life. A Crucial Addition to Corpus Christi Bay: As part of the Corpus Christi Bay system, the project serves as both a social and ecological catalyst. It reconnects the city’s urban core with its waterfront through networks of trails, canals, and green corridors. Simultaneously, it reintroduces marshlands and habitats that strengthen biodiversity and act as natural defenses against storm surges. By merging housing, ecology, and recreation, Island Park establishes a new coastal identity for Corpus Christi: resilient, inclusive, and regenerative. Ultimately, Island Park reframes the relationship between land and sea. It envisions a future where architecture becomes buoyant, landscapes become protective, and communities thrive in rhythm with the tides.

Coastal territories are increasingly destabilized by the accelerating impacts of climate change—rising sea levels, intensifying storm events, and tidal inundation are eroding the reliability of existing infrastructure systems. Low-lying urban regions such as the Corpus Christi Bay area are particularly susceptible, where interdependencies between the maritime economy, energy production, and residential zones amplify vulnerability to environmental disruption. As hydro-meteorological hazards escalate, conventional fixed-edge infrastructure no longer meets the adaptive capacity required for long-term coastal resilience.

In response, contemporary architectural discourse calls for new amphibious and adaptive typologies that operate at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, and ecology. These emergent systems must integrate flexibility, redundancy, and modularity to accommodate hydrodynamic variability. Built environments in coastal contexts can no longer be conceived as static constructs; rather, they must function as responsive infrastructures—capable of transformation under shifting climatic regimes while maintaining critical operational continuity.

Through a collaborative and iterative design methodology, Float Link: An Emergency Terminal to Enhance Coastal Resilience proposes a climate-responsive architectural typology that synthesizes transport infrastructure and emergency refuge within a single floating system. The project operates as a modular, buoyant terminal designed to facilitate multimodal water transit while simultaneously serving as a temporary shelter during extreme weather events. Engineered through a prefabricated, interlocking module system, Float Link’s structural buoyancy and distributed load capacity allow it to dynamically adjust to fluctuating water levels and wave action. Integrated photovoltaic arrays and rainwater harvesting systems further enhance its autonomy and post-disaster performance.

Situated within the Corpus Christi Bay, Float Link functions as a critical infrastructural node—strengthening regional evacuation logistics, ensuring continuity of mobility, and extending the city’s resilience network into the water. Its modular deployment framework enables scalable implementation along other vulnerable coastlines, transforming risk zones into resilient urban interfaces. Beyond its technical performance, the project also acts as a civic catalyst, fostering community engagement, environmental awareness, and adaptive coastal planning.

Ultimately, Float Link redefines the architectural interface between land and sea. By merging engineering precision with ecological intelligence, it establishes a new model for amphibious urbanism—where architecture evolves not as a barrier against climate volatility but as an adaptive agent within an ever-changing maritime landscape.

Storm Pods is sited within climate-stressed coastal zones where sea-level rise, intensified hurricanes, and recurrent storm surge are no longer exceptional events but baseline conditions. Along the Gulf Coast, conventional waterfront development still relies on fixed elevations, rigid utilities, and single-use tourism infrastructure, producing high vulnerability and repeated reconstruction cycles after major storms. Under these conditions, architecture can no longer assume stable ground, predictable return periods, or purely recreational waterfront programs. It must integrate flood risk, surge heights, and evacuation logistics directly into form, structure, and circulation.

These changing parameters require new architectural and urban typologies that exceed the limits of static, land-locked buildings. Typical hotels, marinas, and harbor facilities are not designed to absorb prolonged inundation, lateral wave forces, or rapid program shifts between leisure and emergency use. Future typologies must be amphibious, modular, and reconfigurable, with redundancies in access, power, and shelter capacity. They must operate simultaneously as revenue-generating hospitality assets and as deployable components of coastal resilience and disaster response.

Developed through a co-creative design process combining site mapping, environmental modeling, and scenario-based planning, Storm Pods proposes such a typology: a climate-responsive, future-fit motel for storm-prone coastal regions. The project is organized as a field of modular, elevated or floating units that can be incrementally added, relocated, or reoriented relative to prevailing winds, surge pathways, and docking needs. In normal conditions, each pod functions as short-stay accommodation; during storm events, the same units shift into a protected, semi-off-grid shelter mode with integrated storage zones, potential battery backup, and consolidated, weather-protected circulation spines.

Within the Corpus Christi bay area, Storm Pods performs as an additional operational layer over existing seawall and marina infrastructure. It densifies the waterfront with adaptable occupation rather than permanent mass, provides elevated observation and refuge points, and creates potential staging interfaces for small craft and relief operations. The system is conceived not as a singular object-building but as a scalable network that can be phased, replicated, or extended along the bay.

In conclusion, Storm Pods positions coastal hospitality as dual-purpose climate infrastructure. It reframes the motel as a modular, water-adaptive platform that couples everyday economic use with acute storm readiness, aligning architectural form with the evolving risk profile of coastal cities.

1. Aisha Owusu, Public Affairs & Planning

Title: Community-Led Environmental Justice and Reparative Planning in Sandbranch, Texas

Sandbranch, Texas—an unincorporated freedmen’s settlement established in the 1870s just twelve miles from downtown Dallas—remains one of the most enduring cases of infrastructural neglect and racialized environmental inequality in North Texas. Despite its proximity to one of the nation’s most advanced metropolitan regions, Sandbranch has existed for decades without piped water, sewer systems, or municipal services, embodying what Durst and Wegmann (2017) define as informality through exclusion. Situated within the theoretical frameworks of urban informality (Roy, 2005), radical and insurgent planning (Miraftab, 2009), decolonial urbanism (Watson, 2009), and reparative planning (Williams, 2020), this research also draws upon environmental justice theory (Bullard, 2018) to examine how the racialized production of space translates into uneven environmental exposure and vulnerability. Collectively, these perspectives frame Sandbranch not as an unplanned anomaly but as a product of historically entrenched racial planning, where the absence of state investment is both spatial and environmental. Yet within this neglect, residents have enacted insurgent and reparative practices of self-provisioning, advocacy, and collective care that challenge the boundaries of formal planning.

Building from this theoretical grounding, the study seeks to answer: How can quantitative environmental models be meaningfully connected with qualitative narratives from Sandbranch residents to illuminate patterns of vulnerability and resilience?

To address this question, the research will adopt a mixed-method design integrating environmental sensing, spatial analysis, and participatory qualitative inquiry. Future phases of this project aim to resume and expand air-quality data collection from previous graduate students and planning researchers — capturing both outdoor and indoor particulate matter (PM₂.₅ and PM₁₀) through community-deployed sensors—while deepening the qualitative dataset of resident interviews, surveys, and photovoice projects (Reyes et al., 2024). Open-source environmental datasets such as Landsat 8 land surface temperature, FEMA floodplain classifications, and the CDC Social Vulnerability Index could help complement analysis. Their use could ensure transparency, reproducibility, and accessibility (i.e. key principles of environmental justice) by enabling residents and researchers alike to visualize structural inequities in exposure to heat, pollution, and flood risk.

Central to this methodology is participatory engagement: a series of workshops and data-literacy sessions will invite residents to co-interpret findings, validate spatial models, and collaboratively design resilience interventions. This participatory process is not only methodological but ethical. It is aimed at empowerment, environmental justice, and trust-building. Ultimately, by bridging community-generated environmental data with lived experience, this research advances a reparative and insurgent planning praxis in which historically excluded communities such as Sandbranch reclaim both the right to data and the right to plan their own futures.

2. Evan Mistur, Julene Paul, Aisharya Bhattacharjee, & Ariana Grant, Public Affairs & Planning

Title: Fracking and Environmental Injustice: Assessing Exposure to Pollutants among Texas Schoolchildren

Fracking is increasingly a source of concern in Texas. The confluence of fracking resources and dense population creates the potential for environmental harms, heightening concerns for previously underexplored groups such as schoolchildren who are both more vulnerable to pollutants and unable to influence decisions about the siting of negative facilities. We compile geolocated data on active fracking sites from the Texas Railroad Commission and school data from the US Department of Education to investigate the extent of environmental injustices imposed by fracking interests on communities across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Using spatially weighted statistical modeling, we measure the rate of exposure to fracking wells experienced by school children and assess the extent to which these hazards are disproportionately imposed on schools with higher rates of poverty, lower performance, and higher shares of minority students. The results will shed light on the extent of self-imposed health risks current fracking siting practices are imposing on school children in North Texas and the extent to which these risks represent environmental injustices for more vulnerable schools.

3. Atefe Makhmalbaf & Kayvon Khodahemmati, Architecture

Title: Characterization of Parameters Affecting Personal Thermal Comfort Models used in Occupant-Centric Building Controls

In the U.S., buildings consume about 40% of total energy consumption. Despite the tremendous technological advancements in the area of HVAC control, building control systems have failed to inclusively balance energy savings and occupant thermal comfort. Thermal comfort is a critical workplace equity issue. On average, Americans spend about 90 percent of their time indoors and HVAC systems have the extremely challenging task of providing thermal comfort while meeting the ever-increasing expectations of decreasing building energy consumption. Thermal comfort has great importance to occupants. Occupants are more dissatisfied with the adverse thermal conditions compared to other indoor environmental quality problems such as visual and acoustic discomfort. Achieving occupant thermal satisfaction is complicated because of its inherently personal and variable nature.

Thermal comfort is not a uniform response, but rather the result of diverse demographic, behavioral, and environmental influences—making it a critical workplace inclusion and equity issue, as it varies significantly based on occupants’ characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, metabolic rate, and health condition. Yet, existing personal thermal preference models have systematically overlooked socio-cultural differences and diversity between building occupants. This disregard for individual differences is evident in the design of their experiments. For example, one study found that participants of most recent personal comfort studies often have similar demographic attributes and health conditions. The median number of participants in these recent studies was 11, primarily young healthy occupants in their early 20’s, and occupants with lower thermal sensitivity (e.g., elderly) have not been considered.

To better understand this variability, in this study, occupants’ thermal comfort levels, demographic information, and energy saving preferences were collected from 366 occupants across different building and office types by conducting and analyzing a web-based survey at University of Texas in Arlington. Data collected include age range, gender, tolerance for temperature change, attitude towards saving energy and environmental sustainability. Data was collected from different types occupant such as faculty, staff and students at different ranks with individual, shared, or open layout offices. Thermal sensation was measured on a five-point, balanced ordinal scale: Too cold, Cold, Comfortable, Warm, Too warm. The dataset was analysed using ordinal logistic regression with multiple imputation for missing data. Interaction terms (e.g., Age-Activity, Gender-Clothing, and Age-Activity) were included to test the combined effects. Results showed that clothing insulation, activity, age, gender, race/ethnicity, and space type significantly shaped thermal responses. For instance, older adults, especially older men, reported higher odds of cold discomfort. Additionally, shared offices were associated with lower comfort, and ethnic groups showed differing thermal perceptions. The inclusion of interaction terms provided greater explanatory power and revealed systematic differences obscured by population averages. These findings demonstrate that occupant-centric models, which account for demographic and contextual diversity, can produce more equitable and accurate predictions of thermal comfort, supporting HVAC strategies that balance inclusivity, comfort, and energy efficiency.

4. Samyuktha Saravanan & Deden Rukmana, Architecture & Public Affairs & Planning

Title: Transit-Oriented Development in Arlington Utilizing Geospatial Data and Grasshopper

According to Arlington’s 2015 comprehensive plan, major growth within the city can be attributed to the construction of the DFW airport and the I-20 highway. With the increase in commuter culture at the University of Texas at Arlington and students who lack access to cars, access to safe and resilient public transportation hubs will be a necessary and sustainable development throughout DFW, Arlington, and campus areas as Arlington's growth continues to rise. Public transportation is a crucial consideration when planning Arlington's future, as it is resilient, cost-effective, and eases travel, which in turn supports businesses throughout the DFW area, ultimately boosting the city’s economy in significant ways. From large-scale bus/train stations to small bicycle and bus stands, these hubs provide people with an ideally safe third space to gather and wait for modes of transport.

This research will propose various methods and results of implementing transit-oriented development (TODs) within the city of Arlington. TODs are defined as mixed-use residential or commercial areas that aim to maximize access to public transportation, according to Arlington’s 2015 comprehensive plan. The intentional placement of various types of TODs and architectural transit typologies will depend on Geographic Information System (GIS) data collection to then be input into architectural software, Grasshopper, to accurately design infrastructure and inform potential planners and architects where such typologies could potentially exist in Arlington, along with their benefits and costs. GIS data collection will primarily include automobile and pedestrian traffic, sun studies, residential demographics, locations of convenience stores, areas consisting of forestry and bodies of water, and carrying capacity analysis, which all can inform the aforementioned design decisions of these transit typologies. Ultimately, the goal is to produce human-centered yet technologically advanced designs via combining GIS data collection and code-based architectural software that caters to a future-city version of Arlington. While the design process is occurring, meetings with the Arlington city council will take place under existing UTA-graduate-retention research and will consider the opinions of UTA students and Arlington residents via surveys, fostering civic engagement.

Expected outcomes will include a solidified proposal of transit-oriented development within the 2015 Arlington comprehensive plan’s suggested area of development, being the region between Park Row Road and Interstate 30 (I-30), and UT Arlington’s campus to promote conversation around DFW public transit. More specifically, the TODs of interest will be an official mixed-use bus/train station modeled via Rhino and Grasshopper based on the aforementioned geographic data of interest, along with MavMover portable bus stations planted throughout UTA’s campus. This hypothetical bus/train station can have solar-powered and green spaces integrated into its design based on sun studies, house additional services and small businesses, and feature a public third space that is safe and aesthetically pleasing to stay at while waiting on public transit. This research will be presented in the form of a poster, including GIS mapping data, approximate budgeting of this development and digital models of the aforementioned official mixed-use commercial bus/railway station of Arlington and the portable bus stops around UTA’s campus.

5. Farruh Farhodov & Dyan Monzon, Architecture

Title: Safe Station: A Resilient Mobility Hub for Emergency Response

Safe Station is a modular bus station designed to provide resilience and mobility during emergencies such as hurricanes and flooding. The station’s dimensions are carefully calibrated to integrate seamlessly into existing parking spaces, allowing rapid deployment without the need for extensive planning or site modifications. This flexibility ensures that Safe Station can be positioned in multiple urban or suburban contexts, enabling emergency transportation networks to remain operational when traditional infrastructure is compromised.

The station includes an enclosed space that functions as a temporary shelter for commuters and residents during crises. Inside, occupants have access to essential resources, including potable water stored in an integrated water tank. The water system is supported by a green roof designed with a gentle tilt, directing rainwater inward and channeling excess toward the porous ground below. This innovative system captures and stores stormwater for reuse, providing a sustainable solution for hydration and sanitation in emergency situations.

Structurally, Safe Station is primarily constructed from cross-laminated timber (CLT), selected for its strength, durability, and ease of assembly. The modular CLT components allow for rapid prefabrication and transportation, reducing construction time and enabling deployment even in challenging conditions. The foundation and main ground support, constructed from reinforced concrete, elevate the station above ground level, protecting it from floodwaters and ensuring long-term stability.

The station’s design prioritizes adaptability, resilience, and sustainability. Its modular nature allows for scalable deployment: multiple units can be combined to accommodate higher passenger volumes or to create expanded shelter spaces. The integration of sustainable materials, passive water collection, and stormwater management supports both environmental responsibility and functional efficiency.

By combining thoughtful engineering with emergency-responsive design, Safe Station redefines the concept of a mobility hub. It not only maintains transportation continuity during crises but also provides a safe and self-sufficient environment for those affected. In doing so, it exemplifies how modular, resilient architecture can address urgent urban challenges while promoting community safety, environmental stewardship, and rapid adaptability.

6. Grant Leevy & Julia Lindgren, Architecture

Title: Fabricated Flexibility: Digital Tools and the Future of Small-Scale Living in DFW

As the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex continues to grow and shift toward denser patterns of living, the idea of maximizing smaller residential spaces has become a critical part of shaping future housing models. The region’s housing stock is transitioning away from the traditional Texas starter home toward multi-family typologies, and this shift is redefining how interior environments function. Smaller living spaces require a more intentional organization of programs, and the integration of space-saving architectural systems becomes a primary tool in maintaining or even improving quality of life within compact units. In many cases, the design of adaptable interiors has become as important as the building envelope itself.

Within DFW, rapid population growth, rising land values, and the increase in apartment oriented development have created a new expectation for how residents navigate domestic space. This shift introduces space-saving architecture as a threshold between different stages of life going from living with parents to living alone to living as a family in a single family home. The transition from a detached home to a compact unit alters how individuals understand privacy, efficiency, and personal space. Texans who are accustomed to spreading outward are beginning to adjust to the idea of living closer together, and the architectural response must accommodate this change without compromising comfort or usability. Modular built-ins, transformable furniture, and multi-functional partitions have emerged as key components in negotiating limited square footage while maintaining flexibility.

As cities like Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, and their surrounding suburbs evolve, the spaces residents occupy will directly influence how they live. Future cities in the region will likely move toward vertically oriented housing with an emphasis on shared amenities, smaller private units, and more efficient spatial planning. These shifts will challenge previous assumptions about space consumption and will require residents to adopt new habits centered around proximity, efficiency, and community-oriented design. The architectural response to these conditions must operate at both the building scale and the interior scale, using compactness as an opportunity rather than a limitation. This research will explore these ideas through the lens of digital fabrication which offers a significant advantage in making these compact living strategies more accessible and customizable for different users and demographic groups. CNC milling, robotic assembly, and modular prefabrication allow interior elements to be tailored to specific spatial constraints, user preferences, or cultural expectations. These tools also reduce material waste and make it possible to produce precise components that integrate storage, structure, and circulation into a single system. In the DFW metroplex—where apartments vary widely in size, proportion, and configuration—digitally fabricated interior systems can provide flexibility without requiring major changes to the building’s core construction. As the region continues to densify, the reliance on adaptable space-saving solutions will shape how residents understand comfort, efficiency, and residential identity. DFW’s shift toward compact living environments is not simply a matter of reducing square footage; it represents a broader cultural and architectural transition. The careful integration of transformable interiors, combined with digital fabrication’s ability to deliver refined and individualized spatial systems, positions the metroplex to redefine urban living for a new generation.

7. Jordon Drumgoole, Landscape Architecture

Title: Redevelopment as Restoration: Integrating Policy, Design, and Culture in North Texas Communities

This study examines the intersection of heritage, policy, and design in two historic Black settlements along the Trinity River: Garden of Eden and Mosier Valley in Fort Worth. Originally established as self-sufficient Freedom Colonies by emancipated families, these communities now exist within industrialized landscapes, bearing traces of agrarian life amid contemporary neglect. Through historical research, GIS analysis, field documentation, and integrated policy and design proposals, the project reconceptualizes these settlements as models for equitable, sustainable, and human-centered urban development. The case studies provide a framework for navigating the persistent tension between preservation and urban growth, illustrating how coordinated policy, design, and community engagement can transform redevelopment into restorative practice, which addresses historic injustices while fostering long-term resilience and promoting inclusive community growth that benefits all city residents.

Plants are essential for a thriving environment, encouraging biodiversity and creating harmony between the urban environment and nature. However, the wrong kinds of plants can disrupt the balance, harming native ecosystems and local wildlife. This research project investigates the presence and impact of invasive plant species across the University of Texas at Arlington’s campus, which lies within two different ecoregions: the Cross Timbers and the Texas Blackland Prairies. The study identifies where invasive species reside on campus, examines their environmental effects, and explores eco-regionally native alternatives that could serve as more sustainable substitutes. Tools such as ArcGIS, iNaturalist, and various plant databases, such as the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center database, the Native Plant Society of Texas database, and the USDA Plants database, are used for mapping and identification. It’s anticipated that the campus harbors a range of invasive, native, and non native but non-invasive species. This research aims to raise awareness of invasive plant management and provide insight for UTA’s upcoming Campus Master Plan, ensuring that future landscaping supports ecological health and long-term sustainability.

9. Noah Hendrix, Public Affairs & Planning

Title: Punctuated Equilibrium Theory: The Case of Public Health Regulations and Implications for Metropolitan Resilience

Punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) has gained traction in policy process research due to its ability to explain why policy is mostly stable but occasionally undergoes explosive change (Baumgartner et al., 2023). However, most PET analyses focus on federal budgetary and legislative change, neglecting the many other forms of policy and other levels of government. Federal regulations are a key form of policy for creating sustainable systems and define the rules in which many local government organizations operate. For example, public healthcare organizations must operate within the bounds of regulations managed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Office of Civil Rights (OCR). Public health is critical for the long-term outlook of cities, so it is important to understand the policy process of regulatory bodies in order to improve metropolitan resilience.

Purpose: This poster investigates how Punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) dynamics function in technocratic environments by examining the patterns change in regulations managed by the FDA and the implications for local policymakers.

Methods: This study uses text analysis to examine changes to the FDA’s regulations for Investigational Device Exemptions (IDE) (21 CFR 812) and Investigational New Drugs (IND) (21 CFR 312). These regulations represent a technical set of policies that have been maintained by a single bureaucratic agency (the FDA) and housed in a single Part of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) for their entire history, offering a unique opportunity to assess how policies change over time.

I use text analysis on the annually published editions of the CFR to conduct a change distribution study of the FDA’s IDE and IND regulations. The primary analysis uses the RegData methodology (Al-Ubaydli & McLaughlin, 2017) to generate a restriction score for each document by summing the word counts of “shall”, “must”, “may not”, “prohibited”, and “required.” The score provides a measure of how regulatory restrictions on medical device and drug research have changed over time.

Lastly, I will add a discussion on how cities can prepare for regulatory policy punctuations through the framework of resilience engineering.

Findings: The analyses result in two policy change distributions, one for IDEs and one for INDs, with their corresponding kurtosis values. The distributions illustrate the magnitude of year-over-year changes in the scores as the FDA has adjusted the rules for device and drug development. The kurtosis values will tell whether the pattern of change fits with the PET prediction of leptokurtic distributions (i.e., excess small and large changes), thus shedding light on how PET dynamics function in technocratic environments.

Discussion: PET has strong support in public budgeting studies and comparative policy process research. However, it makes strong claims about the universal applicability of PET (based on its foundations in theories of attention and organizational information processing) that have not yet been thoroughly tested outside of national budgetary and legislative policy. This study will help to prove that generalizability and improve our understanding of how PET operates. By focusing on regulatory bodies, it will also improve the value of PET for local government practitioners by revealing the patterns of change in the restrictions that directly affect their operations.

10. Marylin D Rozario & Karabi Bezboruah, Public Affairs & Planning

Title: Bridging Capacity and Need: Organizational Inequities and Food Insecurity Across Texas Food Banks

This study examines how disparities in financial, human, and infrastructural capacity shape food insecurity across Texas food banks. Using mixed methods, the analysis reveals that rural and border food banks face the highest insecurity but have the least resources, while urban food banks demonstrate stronger capacity and innovation. Findings highlight that uneven capacity perpetuates inequities, underscoring the need for targeted investments to strengthen nonprofit resilience and equity.

11. Oswald Jenewein, Kelvin Awour, Sultan Jarbouh, Karabi Bezboruah, Michelle Hummel, Architecture

Title: Co-creating a Smart Coast: Bridging Human & Artificial Intelligence in Architecture and Urbanism

Coastal regions are at the forefront of climate change. Rising sea levels, stronger storms, and industrial pressures are transforming the ecological and social balance along the Texas Coast. These changes threaten housing, infrastructure, and livelihoods while demanding new approaches to adaptation. Architecture and urbanism play a critical role in shaping this response by linking spatial design, environmental data, and community knowledge into strategies for resilience and long-term sustainability. The future of coastal adaptation depends on connecting these disciplines with the people who inhabit and transform these environments every day.

Community engagement becomes the bridge between environmental research and design practice. In architecture and urbanism, participation ensures that local knowledge and lived experience directly inform design decisions. Workshops, mapping sessions, and public forums allow residents to share insights about their environment, identify vulnerabilities, and envision adaptive futures. These exchanges strengthen the connection between people and place, yet translating collective input into spatial representation can be difficult, especially when many voices and complex conditions are involved. To make this dialogue more effective, new tools are needed that can help translate community expression into spatial understanding in real time.

Artificial intelligence introduces one such method. Within community workshops, AI tools can process verbal or written input and visualize it immediately as diagrams, maps, or spatial sketches. This transformation of dialogue into visual form allows participants to see how their contributions influence the evolving discussion. It turns words into shared representations that all participants can respond to and refine together. The process makes engagement more transparent and interactive, reinforcing the sense that every participant contributes meaningfully to the design process. Rather than replacing human judgment, AI acts as a visualization partner that enhances collaboration and supports the creative and interpretive dimensions of design.

The Smart Coast Initiative at the University of Texas at Arlington applies this collaborative approach through research in architecture and urbanism along the Texas Coastal Bend. Faculty, students, engineers, planners, and residents co-create adaptive strategies that connect environmental data with community priorities. Projects such as Visualizing Coastal Hazards and Coastal Bend Vision 2050 demonstrate how AI-assisted visualization strengthens engagement and turns dialogue into design outcomes that inform planning and policy.

This poster presents the Smart Coast Initiative as a case study of how human and artificial intelligence can work together in architecture and urbanism to foster participatory resilience. It illustrates how design thinking and technological tools merge with community engagement to make adaptation visible, collective, and actionable, envisioning a more sustainable and adaptive Texas Coast.

12. Selvana Getsy Lnu, Landscape Architecture

Title: Small-Scale Green Infrastructure in Urban Networks - Trinity Presbyterian Church as a Pilot Project

Rapid‍‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‌ urbanization and increasing impervious cover in cities like those within the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex have intensified flooding, heat, erosion, and declining ecological quality. Although large-scale green infrastructure (GI) interventions are popularly acknowledged as a solution to these issues, the small-scale institutional landscapes still constitute a neglected, yet potent, urban GI networks' component. This study serves as a pilot project in evaluating the potential of small-scale GI interventions at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Plano, Texas. The goals are to: reduce stormwater runoff, provide ecological and microclimatic improvements, and increase community engagement and environmental awareness in public institutional settings.

The study employs a mixed-methods research design. It combines site inventory and analysis, expert and stakeholder interviews, church member surveys, and an interactive design preference activity for the community members. The hydrological assessments locate erosion and drainage problems that result from high impervious coverage and inefficient landscape structure. Social data point to limited green infrastructure (GI) awareness at the start; however, they indicate also a strong enthusiasm for sustainable, low-maintenance landscape improvements like rain gardens, native plantings, shaded seating areas, and attractive educational features. Advice from experts highlights the necessity of balancing ecological function with user experience, using phased implementation, and presenting GI as a friendly, community-oriented concept.

The findings indicate that strategically placed rain gardens, dry creek channels, and broadened native planting beds can together store around 2 million gallons of stormwater yearly, lower localized heat, improve air quality, and attract more diverse flora and fauna. Community feedback documents strong approval of these measures, particularly when they are aesthetically intentional, well-framed, and programmatically relevant. Consequently, the design framework exemplifies that small institutional campuses can be decentralized nodes within a larger urban GI network, hence providing replicable, cost-effective local strategies that contribute to metropolitan ecological resilience and stewardship.

This Masters in Landscape architecture thesis project contributes to academic research of GI in faith-based institutional settings. It expands not only as a case study but also proposes a set of transferable design guidelines for similar public institutional campuses. The study shows that small-scale GI, socially supported and ecologically grounded, has significant potential to bridge fragmentation in urban green systems and inspire community-driven sustainability practices.

13. Shane Pellerin, Shadi Nazarian, Negar Ashrafi, Brad Bell, Architecture

Title: Robotic Fabrication and Housing Resilience: Craft, Concrete, and the Future of Semi-Urban Living

As robotic and additive manufacturing technologies spread across Texas, their potential to reshape housing construction in North Texas grows increasingly relevant. This research explores how robotic 3D printing in concrete can support the creation of affordable, resilient, and culturally grounded housing in a region defined by rapid growth, material pragmatism, and a strong craft tradition. Positioned within the UTA Digital Fabrication Lab, this research and design (R&D) investigation integrates computational workflows, parametric modeling, material testing, and prototyping, to develop modular 3D-printed concrete systems responsive to local climatic, cultural, and economic conditions. By merging rule-based digital design with tactile construction logic, the project examines how automation and human craft can coexist to produce a more nuanced architectural language for North Texas communities.

The research focuses on geopolymer and low-carbon concrete mixes suited for robotic printing—offering reductions in both environmental impact and construction waste. These materials form the basis for a kit-of-parts system, adaptable to varied semi-urban and suburban contexts where traditional timber construction faces challenges of cost, durability, and long-term maintenance.

Through iterative prototyping and full-scale experimentation, the work tests how fabrication intelligence can yield regionally-specific building components—structural shells, shading systems, and enclosures that express both material performance and craftsmanship. Beyond efficiency, the project seeks to redefine affordability through design quality, positioning robotic fabrication as a tool for reviving regional craft in a digital age.

Ultimately, the study situated (in) North Texas as a testing ground for human–robot collaboration in construction, where technological precision meets the cultural value of making. By embedding craft, computation, and community within the same workflow, this research proposes a new architectural vernacular—one that is materially intelligent, locally attuned, and capable of shaping the next chapter of North Texas housing.

Key Research Questions:

• How can robotic fabrication bridge the gap between digital precision and regional craft in North Texas architecture?
• In what ways can 3D-printed modular systems address affordability, adaptability, and identity within semi-urban housing?
• Can material experimentation and computational workflows redefine how North Texas builds—preserving the human act of making in an age of automation?
• Are technology and craft truly separate—or can they coexist to define the next chapter of affordable, resilient architecture?

14. Ayushi Mavuduru, Architecture

Title: Typologies of Transition: Assessing three residential housing typologies in service of former foster youth in the DFW metroplex

This synthesis of case study research and architectural experimentation designs for a future Metropolis by centering the needs of a particularly vulnerable yet underserved population: youth transitioning out of foster care. As an extended investigation conducted within a design studio focused on three residential typologies: the atrium house, townhouse, and single-stair apartment, this project considers the strengths, weakness, and relevance of each in serving the needs of former foster youth. This project integrates sociological research regarding the distinct needs of youth transitioning out of foster care with architectural case studies of comparable built supportive housing projects, and a comparative exercise in applying the three typologies to a singular site in Fort Worth. Each proposed on a site in the affluent, predominantly single-family While Settlement neighborhood in Fort Worth these three typologies represents an attainable entry point to increased residential density and availability of supportive housing units to transition-age youth.

This project addresses the ownership, privacy, and security needs of former foster youth, while parallelly engaging with the NIMBIYism supportive housing projects of this nature bring with them. These issues are addressed through spatial organization and experiential narratives that propose approaches scale and form harmonious to the surrounding single-family homes, as well as through the integration of greenspace at both the public and individual levels. Together these three typologies respond to the varying needs of former foster youth in terms of peer support, mentoring and case management from older adults, and individual ownership of space. Special attention is given to facade design and tectonic characteristics that provide light and ventilation to the residences giving dignity to the built form of each typology, and, by extension, its inhabitants. Moreover, the inclusion of the emerging single-stair typology- recently legalized in Austin- underscores the potential for this building form in providing attainable increases in available supportive housing units, should it be legalized in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.

This project culminates in a comparison of the three typologies with respect to environmental characteristics like daylight and airflow, spatial organization of public and private space, perceptual relationships to its context, and experiential qualities for its residents. The strengths and weaknesses of these typologies are then compiled into a decision matrix correlating each form to specific resident needs and site conditions.

15. Nazmun Akter Pia, Public Affairs & Planning

Title: The Influence of Neighborhood Quality on Children’s Heal

The neighborhoods where children live, learn, and play have a significant impact on their health and well-being. Neighborhood forms the backdrop of children’s daily routines with the sidewalks they walk on, the parks they visit, the streets they cross, and the people they interact with. It also serves as a critical setting for learning both risk and resilience by shaping scope for physical activity, emotional wellbeing, and developmental milestones (Villanueva et al., 2016; Jansson et al., 2022).

Despite this significant role, children’s experience in their neighborhood contexts is still underexplored in planning and public health studies, especially when it comes to analyzing how social and physical elements of neighborhoods impact children's physical and mental health outcomes. Most studies tend to analyze physical and mental health domains in isolation, thus offering a limited understanding of their interrelated nature within the context of neighborhood environments. Using data from the 2022 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH), this study examines how neighborhood quality, such as safety, social cohesion, available amenities, and presence of physical disorder, affects children's physical and mental health.

This research focuses on school-aged children (5–17 years) and employs multivariate logistic regression to examine associations between neighborhood socio-physical quality and children’s overall well-being. The study investigates the following research questions:

1. How is neighborhood quality associated with children’s general physical health and mental health (e.g., anxiety, depression)?
2. Do these associations differ across key demographic characteristics (e.g., race/ethnicity, income level)?
3. What implications do these associations have for neighborhood design and urban planning?

To complement regression analysis, a machine learning model (Random Forest classifier) will be used to evaluate the relative significance of neighborhood predictors. Preliminary findings are expected to demonstrate that higher neighborhood quality, characterized by safety, supportive social ties, and accessible community amenities, is positively associated with better physical health and lower risk of anxiety and depression. On the other hand, neighborhoods characterized by disorder, poor maintenance, or limited recreational amenities are likely to correlate with poorer health outcomes, particularly among children from low-income or minority households. These patterns highlight the intersection between built environment design, social capital, and health equity.

This study contributes to an emerging body of interdisciplinary research linking urban planning, urban design, and public health. The findings will provide actionable implications for planners, designers, and policymakers seeking to create healthier and more inclusive communities. It will also inform the creation of child-friendly, equitable, and resilient neighborhoods where urban form and social infrastructure together promote thriving futures for young residents.