Urban@UW Publishes Annual Report

Urban@UW, a large network of scholars and practitioners that supports research and practice for sustainable and just urban systems across all three University of Washington campuses, has released its Fall 2020 Annual Letter detailing recent activities.

Urban@UW, a partnership between the UW Office of Research and the College of Built Environments, which has been engaging with scholars and community partners for the past five years, is a founding partner of Urbanalytics.

The following activities are among those detailed in the Annual Letter:

The Spark Grants program was launched to support new scholarship in emerging urban challenges and solutions. Initial funds were awarded for two projects:

• Co-creating an Adaptive Community-Science Network: Supporting Tribal and Grassroots Action through the Puget Creek Watershed Assessment
• How Dislocation Impacts Civic Engagement in Parks and Greenspaces

A two-day workshop, Sustaining Communities, was held in September 2019 to examine gentrification, green infrastructure, and anti-displacement strategies, as part of Urban@UW’s Urban Environmental Justice Initiative.

Urban@UW furthered its work with the City of Seattle as one of four city-university partnerships in the Emerald Corridor Collaboratory, which spans Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. The initiative, funded by the Bullitt Foundation, began in 2018. This work is detailed in the winter 2020 report, Experiences in Implementing City University Partnerships (CUPS): Case studies and insights from the Emerald Corridor Collaboratory. The report includes discussion of a UW-Seattle pilot project, Leapfrog to a Shared Right-of-Way, which examined the use of public space and led to additional funding being secured to re-envision the use of community space in two Seattle neighborhoods, Crown Hill and Georgetown.

New research was launched in collaboration with King County to understand how housing people in hotels and motels during the pandemic has impacted homeless people, as part of Urban@UW’s Homelessness Research Initiative. Learn about the initial results of that study here.

Urban@UW is led by Director Jennifer Davison, Interim Faculty Director Ken Yocom, and the Urban@UW Executive Committee, in collaboration with numerous community and academic partners. The complete Annual Letter is available here.