Letter from the Director
Jesse M. Keenan
Welcome to the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism.
The Center on Climate Change and Urbanism (CCU) within the School of Architecture at Tulane University represents the culmination of a several generation’s worth of research and practice to understand how the built environment causes climate change and responds to it. Through research, design investigations, public programming, and university courses and studios, we are here to support students and faculty, as well practitioners, from across the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America. Whether you are an undergraduate student who is interested in exploring how climate change will shape your future career or a seasoned built environment professional, we are here to build bridges around a common dialogue.
Climate change is truly a crisis. The rate and degree of environmental and global change is unprecedented. In different ways, climate change touches everywhere, everything, and everyone. Whether you are a landscape architect or a real estate financier, climate change is not only reshaping professional practices—it is also reshaping the fundamental values, operations, and performance of our built environment. This means everything from housing to energy infrastructure and community healthcare facilities to agricultural supply chains are in the midst of rapidly accelerating change.
Our goal at CCU is to bridge communities of practice and scholarship to define our role in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Being a bridge means that we seek to find common ground between advances in science and social science with on-the-ground practices that define our allied fields in architecture, planning, development and preservation. At this critical moment, climate change is moving faster than we can keep up. But, this is not a sprint—it is a marathon. CCU is here to condition the endurance that we need to set the pace the defines social and environmental sustainability in the built environment. I hope that you can join us along the way.
Jesse M. Keenan, M.Sc., Ph.D., J.D., LL.M., AICP
Favrot II Associate Professor of Sustainable Real Estate and Urban Planning
Director, Center on Climate Change and Urbanism
"Our goal at CCU is to bridge communities of practice and scholarship to define our role in mitigating and adapting to climate change."
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