The allure of Denver's 300 days of sunshine is hard to resist. But this cherished sunny climate comes with a tradeoff: increased UV radiation levels in a city lacking robust shade design infrastructure.

According to the , in the U.S., more people are diagnosed with skin cancer each year than all other cancers combined. In Colorado, it’s the sixth most diagnosed cancer in the state. And while city planners and public health organizations have worked to enhance human health initiatives through advancing neighborhood walkability and bikeability in urban spaces, sun safety considerations, which increase with outdoor activity, have often fallen short.

Last summer, the Community Engagement Design and Research Center (CEDaR) partnered with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to explore the connection between sun exposure, skin cancer and the built environment, and work towards building sun-safe communities in the Mile High City.

Assistant Teaching Professor and CEDaR Research Associate Sara Tabatabaie has been involved with this work for nearly ten years and first conducted shade audits for neighborhoods in Denver as a PhD student. “At that time, it was part of my and ,” she said. “We did it for the CDPHE, but it was a small version. They contacted us again a year and a half ago, and they asked whether we could do it for the whole city.”

The project team, which consisted of Tabatabaie, Associate Professor and CEDaR Co-Director Jota Samper and four ENVD student interns: Logan Shockey, Cameron Cooper, Carl Eberly and Theodore Johnson Mencimer, worked to develop a methodology to assess sun exposure levels across the city. This required completing extensive shade audits within neighborhoods that varied across socio-economic level and built environment amenities.

To complete the audits, the team surveyed public areas like sidewalks, trails and urban parks at different times of day. Audits specifically noted and mapped both walkability of the blocks as well as objects that cast shade, whether from a cluster of trees or from a built structure. They also noted the physical activity within each neighborhood to better understand how often people use outdoor, sun-exposed spaces. 

The shade audits evolved into comprehensive shade models for the entire city. The team used ArcGIS to map shade from both trees and buildings, combining these into a shade factor for each neighborhood and block group. Through integrating shade, walkability scores and socio-economic status information, the team calculated the sun risk index for each neighborhood and block group within neighborhoods to help prioritize areas for shade improvement. 

According to the resulting maps, neighborhoods with high physical activity coupled with insufficient shade structure, which heightened risk of UV exposure, fell mainly to marginalized communities. In many cases, these at-risk neighborhoods also had higher percentages of children, a group that is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of radiation.

“Maybe not surprising, but disheartening, is this idea that the poorest neighborhoods are the ones who need the most intervention in these areas,” Samper said. “It's the ones who actually need the most shade that get the most exposure.”

Currently, Denver does not have a shade auditing component embedded within its Health Impact Assessment, a process that helps identify built environment impacts on community health. The CEDaR team hopes that the results of this study can be a first step in conducting comprehensive health assessments across Denver. They also believe that the CDPHE can use this research and the team’s recommendations as a policy leverage to support existing urban forestry initiatives, enhance streetscaping guidelines and direct more funding to the neighborhoods that need it. 

“We know that what we are doing has a positive impact for the city,” Tabatabaie said.

Samper and Tabatabaie also recognized the positive impact the project had on the team’s student interns. The students were given the opportunity to gain field experience, learn and apply GIS mapping, support data analysis, provide input into the final report’s design and create connections within a government entity. CEDaR hopes to hire more student interns in the future to continue the next phases of the project.

“This is just the first phase of the project, it was about assessing,” Samper said. “The others will be about changing policy. And in the future, it will be about developing prototypes, designing and building things. It’s the entire spectrum of environmental design experience.” 

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For Sophie Weston Chien, textiles are more than fabric—they’re maps, site models and stories woven together. As ENVD’s first Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow, she is pioneering an innovative approach to design communication, one that connects community, ecology and history through the tactile art of tufted textiles.

“The project came from an acknowledgment that there are different ways to communicate with folks and build community around spatial problems or ideas,” Chien said. “Textiles are such an engaging and active way to learn about something through touching it.”

For the past four years, Chien has been using tufted textiles as a dynamic design and environmental communication tool. She’s applied fabric to maps to mimic natural systems and their interactions with the built environment, from to . Her textiles have also expanded into human communities, like in Boston where she with collaborator Amanda Ugorji created a large-scale textile series that maps the . 

And now, through her postdoctoral project, Making Homelands: Tufting San Lazaro Lifeways, Chien hopes to bring tufted textile story maps to the Front Range. 

San Lazaro is a predominantly Latinx manufactured and mobile home community located in northeast Boulder. By gathering oral histories through workshops and conversations with San Lazaro community members, the textiles will act as a visual record of the residents’ relationship to each other, their personal journeys and the changing ecology of their home. 

“Some of the questions I've been asking throughout the process are how can the rugs themselves be a design tool? Can a textile be a site model? Can a city be a rug?” Chien said. “And now in my work with San Lazaro, I'm trying to figure out how the textiles can be a witness to things as well."

Receiving the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship for Faculty Diversity for the 2024-2025 academic year provided Chien with the time and resources to carry out this research. The position, which provides fellows with protected time for scholarship and research in preparation for a tenure-track faculty position, is not only new for ENVD, but is also unique in the field of design academia.

“Design scholarship doesn't easily fit into academic structures,” she explained. “As designers, you're image makers, you're visualizers, you're thinking spatially. And so, for me as a postdoc, I'm really excited because it's given me the space to do the kind of research that I want to be doing, that I think designers should be doing.”

Chien’s design journey began at home, raised by an architect father and landscape architect mother. After completing three professional degrees in architecture, landscape architecture and planning, she developed a keen awareness of both the potential and limitations of design.

“I think there's a lot of people that come out of design school that want to do really impactful things that actually change the world. But if your client isn't a good client, your project is not going to be good,” she said.

Design projects can be significantly limited by the entities that fund the work, approve the design plans and have power over the outcome of the project. In her professional practice, this knowledge encouraged her to seek out clients aiming to grow the structural capacity of people and industry in order to build better spaces. She calls this "design-organizing."

“I started learning about organizing because I was trying to understand how to build power, be it financial, be it social, to actually get better clients,” she said. “That really gave me the ability to think about what it means to build movements alongside building physical spaces.”

In her current postdoc position, design-organizing is exemplified through building strong foundations with the communities she works with, such as the San Lazaro residents. Through forming deep connections with project partners, engaging with community members and collaborating with other CU researchers and experts, she hopes to be an engaged researcher and a responsible teacher. 

“I do think there's an obligation from us as educators, as researchers, to think about the future of the profession and how to change it,” she said.

In Chien’s vision, perhaps the future of design is yet to be tufted. 

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Canada is notorious for its scenic old-growth forests, mouthwatering maple syrup, fervent enthusiasm for ice hockey and notably amiable people. But Canada also boasts a lesser-known aspect that is just as deeply ingrained in its culture and history: its expansive and extractive mining industry.  

“Anywhere there's a mine, there’s probably a good chance that it’s owned by a Canadian company,” Zannah Matson, assistant professor of landscape architecture at ENVD, explained. Canada is home to 75% of the world’s mining companies. From art and science museums to the skyline of Toronto (largely consisting of banks that specifically fund mining operations), cultural institutions are steeped in the history of mining.  

So steeped in fact, that mining has dug its way into elementary school curriculum. Mining Matters, a charitable organization and educational wing of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), provides teachers with trainings and resources centered around mining education. Activities are designed to provide students with “mineral literacy” around mining science and inform youth about career opportunities in mining industries, often through interactive activities and resources like coloring books.  

Through these programs, the darker side of mining (including human rights violations and ecological degradation) is primarily glossed over. “It’s really insidious, they talk about how minerals are made and how great mining is all wrapped in one,” Matson noted. “What would happen if we made a coloring book that tells a more complete history?” 

Matson is a member of Beyond Extraction (BE), a Canadian-based collective of researchers, writers, artists and activists who critically investigate and resist acts of extraction such as industrial mining practices. Each year during PDAC’s global mining convention in Toronto, BE develops educational countermeasures to expose the harm done by mineral extraction. This year, one of their projects is centered around a coloring book.  

According to BE’s website, “What it Takes: an all-ages colouring book” is designed to disrupt the grip that Canada’s mining industry has on culture and education. Flipping through the book, readers will find topics ranging from the history of prospecting and excavation in Canada to discussions of unfair labor practices and environmental pollution. Line-drawn graphics reveal scenes of Indigenous communities and land defenders protesting extractive projects. On page four, young artists can doodle what they imagine a landscape would look like without the mining operations. On page fifteen, they can color in “contaminant triangles” that have leached into rivers, and on page seven they can connect the dots to reveal a gold ring and learn about the 20 tons of waste rock needed to create it. 

Through an accessible and engaging format, the book’s creators are especially hoping to counter the narratives that, in recent years, have attempted to equate mining with environmental sustainability and green technology.  

“That's the big conversation right now with the switch to a green energy future,” Matson explained. “Lithium still comes out of the ground. It's like, okay, that's not oil so it's not specifically causing climate change, but it's causing all these other issues.”  

These issues include fueling socio-political conflicts both abroad and at home. Matson says that her work both with BE and personally is hoping to address these kinds of systemic issues through thinking more holistically about ecological justice, the impacts of infrastructure on communities and by trying to understand the relationship between architecture, planning and extraction.  

“It’s the whole logic of ‘just keep digging stuff out of the ground.’ It's the mentality in general.” Matson acknowledged. An educational coloring book that tells a more complete story of Canada’s sticky relationship with extraction might just be the best way to begin shifting this mentality. Plus, who doesn’t like to color? 

Beyond Extraction has made the coloring book free and accessible online so that teachers, students, or anyone with access to crayons and markers can print it out and engage with it. Visit to view and download a digital spread of “What it Takes: an all ages colouring book." 

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Environmental Design Teaching Assistant Professor John Hersey recently presented two lectures for , an online planning-education resource with classes approved to maintain the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) professional credential. �鶹��Ժ, practitioners and community members interested in better understanding the influences that shape their places may subscribe to Planetizen Courses for access to classes in land-use regulation, multimodal transportation, planning law and policy, housing, and myriad other subjects and learn graphic-design software like the Adobe Creative Suite and Trimble SketchUp. 

Specializing in transit-oriented development (TOD) since his undergraduate studies, Hersey was well prepared to present an to the sustainable growth model as well as a into TOD’s interaction with affordable housing. The latter course, Equitable Transit-Oriented Development, was among Planetizen Courses’ most popular classes of 2022. Hersey is grateful for the opportunity to reach so many subscribers through Planetizen Courses and feels encouraged by the substantial interest in a subject that promises to deliver economic resilience, community benefit, and greenhouse gas reduction. 

Teaching sustainable planning and urban design studios at Environmental Design (ENVD), Hersey encourages students to recognize and leverage a site’s transit, biking, and walking assets to promote healthy, vibrant, and inclusive neighborhoods. In particular, he enjoys helping students wrestle with related subjects like zoning, gentrification, and parking to appreciate the value of transit-oriented development as a sustainable-growth strategy. Outside of ENVD, he has participated with members of the CU and Boulder communities in the Climate Across the Curriculum faculty training and recently promoted and attended the Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit.  

Hersey looks forward to students practicing lessons of transit-oriented development to inform sustainable development for generations to come.

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“Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.” –Louis Pasteur 

Louis Pasteur’s quote distills a core aim of the U.S. Department of State  (JSF), a program Environmental Design Professor Kevin J. Krizek has participated in from 2021 to 2022. The JSF recruits tenured academics to serve as “force multipliers” for science and engineering-oriented thinking–to strengthen perspectives in U.S. diplomacy. Professor Krizek has supported the science of how the next generation of global infrastructure, fueled by rapid technological innovation and clean energy reform, could quickly spread to communities around the world, allowing people to obtain the goods and services needed in a sustainable manner.  

While living in Washington, D.C., for the past year, Professor Krizek has served as a senior advisor in the Office of the Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment. This gave him the opportunity to support U.S. diplomacy in international workshops, learn from Washington-based foundations, be exposed to lobbying efforts and engage in political discussions at some of the highest levels of U.S. government.  

As an extension of his appointment with the State Department, Professor Krizek will assist in the formulation of the inaugural , an office created in part to propel the quick change that is possible, which runs through smaller-scale, community-based operations. As cities worldwide increase their capacity to effectively respond to multiple crises occurring in urban environments, the efforts that Professor Krizek is contributing to will strengthen ties between the State Department with mayors, governors and other local officials in the U.S. and around the world. 

A central goal of the JSF is to sustain a contained partnership between the State Department and universities. Professor Krizek will bring back knowledge of international diplomacy and global infrastructure initiatives to share with the University of Colorado Boulder and the Program in Environmental Design, through classroom teaching, student advising and speaking engagements.  

Professor Krizek will support programming for the inaugural , which will be held in Denver in the spring of 2023. 

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[video:https://youtu.be/FGc1vduZ_6E]

Environmental Design Assistant Professor Jota Samper recently gave a talk on TEDxCU. The talk focuses on Professor Samper's collaborations with students and communities alongside his research on informal Settlements. Informal settlements (what some call slums) are the most common form of urbanization on the planet, accounting for one-third of the total urban form. It is expected that by the mid-twenty-first-century, up to three billion people will live in these urban environments. However, we lack a consistent mapping method to pinpoint where that informality is located or how it expands.

Samper explores the implications of that growth in the atlas of informality and how by visualizing informal communities, we can be made aware of innovations by these communities that can save the planet, TED selected this talk to be part of the TEDx library on. 

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In July, Environmental Design Assistant Professor Shawhin Roudbari was invited to co-guest edit with Germane Barnes, assistant professor and director of The community, Housing and Identity LAB (CHIL) at the University of Miami. The new issue will explore vigilantism with a range of ideas and topics from experts in education, design and architecture. Readers can expect the new issue to be published in March 2021. 

Shawhin Roudbari and Germane Barnes will present their explorations on "architectures of vigilantism" at the 2020 MAS Context Fall Talks, which will be hosted on November 12, 2020 at 6 p.m. CT. .

In 2014, when Roudbari began teaching at CU Boulder, he taught courses in sustainability and social innovation, and in 2016 he became an assistant professor in ENVD.

 “Since the beginning, I've always taught a range of studios, mostly lower division, but the classes that have sort of been near and dear to my heart are the ones on ethics and activism, social change and then recently this class on dissent by design, which has been so great,” Roudbari said. 

“It’s sort of like the first time that my research, my teachings and my interests have all kind of come together. And I have learned so much from the students.” 

ENVD sat down with Roudbari in a Zoom interview to learn more about what to expect in issue 33 of MAS Context, what sparked his research inspiration, and what he hopes the outcome will be. 

In your research, you study how designers organize to address social problems. Can you share how you came into this research and what it means to you?

I used to be very apolitical, like, I had a point about not being engaged in politics for the longest time. Around 2008, when I went back to grad school in architecture, there was a lot happening politically on campus. There was a lot of activism, a lot of protests, and teachings where faculty came and spoke, and this was at Berkeley, which has a big tradition of activism. There was this one guy who I thought was really cool at the time who was talking about apathy, cynicism and these different topics as problematic and instrumental, and I thought ‘wow, those are exactly my reasons for not being politically engaged.’ 

So, I made almost a 180-degree shift and realized that there are a lot of issues I care about. I have a lot of privileges that I need to capitalize on when working on those kinds of problems. So, in general, my research has been about how can people like me, who are design professionals not interested in politics, engage in politics? 

In what ways do you apply your research in the classroom and how do you collaborate with your students?

I think I’m really into exploring non-conventional ways of doing that. I obviously bring case studies from my research into class, but I’m really eager to see how the students can push the boundary. For example, this isn’t necessarily related to activism, but there was a teahouse project where we were working on renovations for the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse, and as a class we wrote a book together called “.” It was put together based on our thoughts about issues in architecture theory using the teahouse as an example. This is one instance where I really wanted to involve the students in as authors. 

So, there’s the idea of giving students more agency to be involved and being able to think through these issues not just as consumers of knowledge but as producers of knowledge. With the dissent by design studio, I also had a similar idea of doing a book led by students, where they could dig into these really contentious social problems and explore through speculative design. Asking questions like, what are ways we can think about transgender violence, the border wall, and any other experiences students have had in their own lives. I really want this to be a space for them to practice thinking through those types of topics. 

The connection I get with my research is that this is my research. It’s working with creative types and designers to think about how we can really engage in these topics and issues. 

So, you were invited to co-guest edit issue 33 of MAS Context. What was that experience like?

That has been a really cool and new kind of process for me! In the fall, I collaborated with ENVD grads Ana Colon and Ann Dang on a workshop and presentation over the topic of racism in architecture, and then I presented it at a conference. It was there that I met Germane Barnes, who was also thinking about topics around race. We sort of hit it off on our shared interests and within a few months we scheduled a call to check in and exchange ideas. That call became monthly calls, which turned into weekly calls where we’re really exploring race and architecture, thinking about the idea of spaces and places as being racist. 

Our conversations became more and more interesting and we came up with this idea of vigilantism. People like the woman in Central Park calling the police on Mr. Cooper. The police officer who shot George Floyd in Minneapolis. These people are acting like vigilantes–somebody who takes state powers and self-policing into their own hands. They’re not given that power through any kind of process, nobody elected them. We also thought about Batman and how he’s a vigilante, but there’s complexity and a darkness about it. 

So we landed on three different aspects of vigilantism, an aggressor, a resistor and a witness. We put together a full proposal with a theme, an abstract and a list of about 12 contributors with very different angles and thoughts around this topic. And that’s how it all kind of transpired. MAS Context is an architectural, interdisciplinary design magazine, and when they replied back to us with not a no, we we’re excited!

Do you both think that you’re going to answer all of the questions listed on ? 

We actually wrote and prompted all of those questions. It was initially for when we reached out to the contributors for the Vigilantism issue. We came up with this one idea around vigilantes, and we like the three different characters, but we wanted to expand it to more than just that one idea, and it worked. We were thinking about it as a spatial thing, another person brought in the idea of it being an aesthetic thing, and another as a material thing and so on. 

What does vigilantism mean to you and how will you contribute that to this issue?

I think the sense I had before all of this was that it wasn’t as racialized. It was a bit more neutral, like people patrolling their neighborhood keeping an eye out, looking for bad actors and cleaning up messes. In the past couple of years, as I’ve learned more about race and racism in America, vigilantism has come to connote things like Jim Crow, racism, lynching, the kinds of things that have happened and continue to happen to this country when people–state actors and non-state actors, police and not police–enact violence on racial minortities, and feel justified in doing so because they thought there was some kind of threat or concern. 

After the issue makes its way into the world and people read it and take it all in, what do you hope the outcome will be? 

I think one thing that really excites both me and Germane, is that this as a publication will be in the world for architecture students to see and use. These are not things that we had access to when we were in school, like new ways of thinking or connecting topics like racism and architecture. So, the idea that this will be in architecture schools and their libraries is pretty exciting. 

One more thing I’d like to note, is that I do think these are uncomfortable topics for a lot of people. They can be politically uncomfortable and emotionally uncomfortable, and theoretically they’re not easy. It’s not like we have any frameworks for thinking about racism in architecture. In the back of my mind, with all those levels of discomfort I’m always trying to be aware that this can be alienating to some people. Some people could feel called out. But, I think a silver lining from the current protests is that more people are hearing terms like anti-racism, fragility and vulnerability. My hope is that more people in society will feel more encouraged, or more comfortable, to get into uncomfortable spaces of thinking when it comes to these topics. 

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