landscape architecture Archives

Cities survived the COVID-19 pandemic. Now the disease could prompt healthier cityscapes, such as more public parks. Photo by Mathias Wasik/picture alliance via Getty Images

Cities don’t spread disease. Inequality does.

Many predicted a severe exodus from cities at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that the highly contagious disease would savage areas with more people. But Northeastern architecture professor Sara Jensen Carr says there's been a historical bias against cities and super-spreader events are caused by poor conditions like access to ventilation and clean water.

by Hillary Chabot July 21, 2021

Marc Carlson, who’s on co-op on Northeastern’s arboretum, inspects a Japanese maple hybrid, also known as an Acer palmatum. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

At school, at work, and at home among the trees

Marc Carlson knows every nook and cranny of campus from walking it day in and day out as part of his co-op on the campus arboretum. Carlson works for Chuck Doughty, who oversees the university’s landscaping. The pair starts each week by walking the campus to survey which of the arboretum’s 1,400 trees and roughly 120 different plant species are flourishing, and which may need a little TLC.

by Molly Callahan October 28, 2020

Sara Jensen Carr. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Six epidemics from American history show how urban design affects our health

What does tuberculosis have to do with your neighborhood park? What does cholera have to do with city grids? Sara Jensen Carr, an assistant professor of architecture at Northeastern, reveals how epidemics, chronic illnesses, and “social diseases” shape the places where Americans live.

by Emily Arntsen August 8, 2019

landscape architecture

Cities don’t spread disease. Inequality does.

At school, at work, and at home among the trees

Six epidemics from American history show how urban design affects our health

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