Center on Climate Change and Urbanism

Tulane University’s School of Architecture has established the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism (CCU) to advance a more holistic understanding of the role of the built environment in causing, mitigating, and adapting to climate change.  

Among its initiatives, the CCU has launched the Tulane Prize for Climate Change Curriculum in the Built Environment to recognize innovative course development by faculty across the world. Nominations for innovative curricula related to climate change in the built environment are being accepted until January 31, 2025, with 10,000 USD in awards available for selected winners. The prize is paired with the launch of climatesyllabus.org, which provides a comprehensive searchable repository for course, studio, and seminar syllabi in urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, building science, real estate development, preservation, and urban policy. 

In addition to the prize and syllabus bank, the CCU will support research among faculty and students and drive public programming on how climate change is shaping the Gulf Coast, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The CCU will serve as the host for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s multi-year Gulf Coast Climate Futures Project, led by Assistant Professor Liz Camuti with Professor Margarita Jover. This initiative considers the legacies of energy extraction across the Gulf Coast, the tensions between current climate mitigation and adaptation efforts in Louisiana and Texas, and post-carbon futures that reimagine energy infrastructure and extraction sites.

“We recognize that climate change is an opportunity to redesign our built environment in a manner that advances affordability, accessibility and environmental sustainability, while also breaking down barriers to segregation, isolation, and carbon-intensive ways of life that have constrained our quality of life,” said Jesse M. Keenan, the center’s Director. 

Keenan, the School of Architecture’s Favrot II Associate Professor of Sustainable Real Estate and Urban Planning, emphasized the importance of everything from measuring the carbon footprint of each building to evaluating physical risks in urban planning projects.

“By bridging teaching and research in climate change, we are preparing our students with the cutting-edge skills that they need to address some of our planet’s most pressing social and environmental challenges,” he said.

One of the center’s initial supported projects includes the “Carbon Budget Zero” studio led by Assistant Professor Sonsoles Vela Navarro, which focuses on designing low-carbon housing and infrastructure in Florida, New York, and California. By targeting these diverse regions, there’s opportunity to explore new ways of retrofitting existing buildings in New York to improve energy efficiency while simultaneously looking at water conservation solutions in California or the use of solar energy in Florida.

Adam Marcus, the CCU’s Research Director and Associate Professor of Architecture, highlighted the critical mass of scholars at Tulane’s School of Architecture already engaged in innovative approaches addressing climate change and plans for more.

“The School of Architecture and CCU are uniquely positioned to support and lead new interdisciplinary collaborations for engaging these challenges in novel and critical ways,” Marcus said.

Catherine Sckerl, CCU’s Managing Director and professor of practice in architecture, will build the center’s infrastructure to support student and faculty research projects and field-based research studios, to deliver programming and events that promote cross-disciplinary dialogue and knowledge-sharing, and to facilitate intra- and inter-institutional initiatives.

“The impacts of climate change are accelerating, and every community is impacted,” Sckerl said. “We can’t continue to ignore it or be passive about including climate adaptations and mitigations in our work. It must be front and center.”