Thursday, August 9, 2007 - 1:40 PMSYMP 20-2: Rigorous research methods applied to large-scale urban infrastructure projects
Alexander J. Felson, EDAW - New York
Opportunities exist to take advantage of the substantial resources going into infrastructure and construction projects to design, fund and build designed experiments for urban ecological research and monitoring. This talk will explore the potential for bringing ecologists, engineers and designers together to insert experimental research units as designed interventions testing and monitoring infrastructure within human-dominated sites. Infrastructure projects including transportation, water, marine, sanitation, energy or post-industrial sites, hold promise as designed research sites because they often have significant budgets for construction and maintenance and they typically occupy large tracts of prime land. The periodic availability of heavy equipment for construction or maintenance also provides potential cost savings for research. Infrastructure is uniquely tied to many aspects of the city, such as circulation, utilities or stormwater, and provides rich opportunities for bridging research with functional aspects of the city. Through designed experiments, ecological research sites balance scientific rigor with creative urban design strategies to produce urban spaces that quantify urban ecological processes and patterns while pursuing the cultural, functional and aesthetic objectives of design.