Amidst concerns of Tea Party representatives, Fulton County recently engaged Georgia Tech Professor Ellen Dunham-Jones, the Atlanta Regional Commission, and George Washington University’s business school to conduct a regional study of "walkable communities" and their potential role as an economic development engine. 

As demographics shift in the United States, Professor Ellen Dunham-Jones believes that suburban growth must adjust along with it. "My dream is to provide affordable housing with affordable transit while retrofitting the abundant underused and underperforming properties lining our aging commercial strip corridors," said Dunham-Jones in a recent interview with American Dreamers.

“It's not surprising that cities are heating up more rapidly than surrounding areas,” says Brian Stone of Georgia Tech, one of the paper's authors. “But the extent to which they're amplifying warming trends did come as a surprise.”

Ellen Dunham-Jones shares her vision of dying malls rehabilitated, dead "big box" stores re-inhabited and parking lots transformed into thriving wetlands. She shows how the design of where we live can impact some of the most pressing issues of our times: reducing our ecological footprint and energy consumption, improving our health and communities, and providing living options for all ages.

Georgia Tech students along with faculty advisor Richard Dagenhart met with the Moreland Community last Saturday to envision the town's future. Special attention was given to reworking the town green, a walkable downtown system of connected sidewalks, and a landscaping and signage plan to help draw attention to the town as a special place. Georgia Tech students working on the project include Daniel Braswell, Nick Coffee, Susannah Lee, Chris Maddox, Canon Manley, Marius Mueller, Stephen Stuttman, Kenny Thompson and Logan Tuura.

"Basically they're building the downtowns that the suburbs never had." -Ellen Dunham Jones, a professor at the College of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology, on efforts by urban planners and community activists to rethink the uses of shopping malls struggling with high vacancy rates.

As Georgia Tech’s Ellen Dunham-Jones shows, there is a growing trend in the U.S. to retrofit suburbia in ways that incorporate what people like about more traditional urban settings. A panel featuring Dunham-Jones, Emil Frankel of the Bipartisan Policy Institute, Geoff Anderson of Smart Growth America, and Amy Fraenkel of the United Nations Environment Programme pointed out some surprising characteristics of the modern American suburb.

Harris Dimitropoulos’ Hecceity (Storrs Gallery, School of Architecture, UNC Charlotte) features nine large digital works made entirely with common tools.

TED Global features Professor Ellen Dunham-Jones' TEDx talk on "retrofitting suburbs" after the talk became a YouTube sensation. According to TED, Dunham-Jones takes "an unblinking look at our underperforming suburbs -- and proposes plans for making them livable and sustainable."

Chuck Eastman, architecture and computing professor, and director of the Digital Building Lab, visits with potential collaborators in Korea.

Architecture and urban design professor Ellen Dunham-Jones keynotes the Region First 2060 workshop and seminar hosted by the Urban Land Institute at the University of North Florida.

“ADAPTING SUBURBS IN THE 21ST CENTURY” at the Museum of Design Atlanta is loosely based on architecture and urban design professor Ellen Dunham-Jones’ book Retrofitting Suburbia. The exhibition features student models, work by local architecture firm Cooper Carry, and the LWARPS: We can reverse sprawl project produced by 11 Georgia Tech faculty and 10 students.

Architecture and urban design professor Ellen Dunham-Jones comments on a CDC report that illustrates the importance of considering public health factors when creating the built environment.

Architecture and urban design professor Ellen Dunham-Jones directed a Museum of Design Atlanta exhibition that showcased architecture students’ transformative visions for dying stripmalls in the Atlanta area.

Architecture and urban design professor Ellen Dunham-Jones applies her research on suburban retrofits to transforming communities for an aging population.

Architecture professor Craig Zimring is applying evidence-based design techniques to help the military upgrade its hospitals and clinics.

Environmental psychologist and architecture professor Craig Zimring is actively helping hospitals combine aesthetics and function with an emphasis on patients and families.

Dean Alan Balfour, author of Berlin (1995), writes about the latest stage in the architectural and political evolution of the Spreeinsel, Berlin’s historic museum island.

Architecture and computing professor Chuck Eastman has pioneered Building Information Modeling, and the advent of powerful computers has enabled architects to produce stunning images of new buildings and other structures.