Dr. Karabi Bezboruah winner of the UTA President’s Award for Transformative Online Education
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Diane Jones Allen, Program Director and Professor of Landscape Architecture, Kate Holliday, Professor of Architecture and Director of the David Dillon Center for Texas Architecture, and Austin Allen, Associate Professor of Practice in the School of Architecture, received the SOM Foundation Research Prize on behalf of UTA. This team is one of two nationwide to win a $40,000 SOM Foundation Research Prize to create a design playbook for Black settlements in North Texas. We are honored to have them represent CAPPA and the university.
The Research Prize was created in 2018 to cultivate new ideas and meaningful research to address our time's critical issues. This year's topic, "Examining Social Justice in Urban Contexts," encouraged applicants to explore and identify long-term policies, immediate actions, and comprehensive plans that have the potential to shape a more equitable and sustainable future.
Diane Jones Allen will lead the SOM project, "Reclaiming Black Settlements: A Design Playbook for Historic Communities in the Shadow of Sprawl." and Austin Allen and Kathryn Holliday are co-collaborators on this project.
They plan to collaborate with historically black communities to create maps that document Freedmen's Towns along the Trinity River and propose design strategies to combat long-standing environmental racism and loss of historic resources. They will address the topic of environmental justice, capacity building, equitable urban development, vacant land, recreational trail planning, coping with natural and artificial ecological hazards, and green infrastructure. The study area focuses on Joppee, The Bottom, Elm Thicket, Bear Creek, Mosier Valley, and Garden of Eden.
A second $20,000 grant from the Dallas Regional Chamber aims to elevate southern Dallas County to a more economically fertile, better-informed and healthier place to live. Holliday; Julia Lindgren, assistant professor of architecture; and Austin Allen are leading this project...