These communities constitute much of the nation; with 3.5 million miles of rivers and tributaries in the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that “most Americans live within a mile of a river or stream.” Coastal communities are facing challenges of the same or more acute urgency. In 2014, NOAA estimated that nearly 40 percent of Americans live in counties along the coast, at a density five times greater than the U.S. average. Similar conditions are replicated in multiple rivers and coasts across the planet, especially in the Global South, facing crises of pollution, floods and scarcity, most critically in urbanized contexts and in rapidly growing megalopolises in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The need for new approaches to the design of the built environment and correspondingly, new models for educating students and equipping professionals to provide the knowledge, skills and leadership required is increasingly evident. Desiree Tullos, an expert on flood risk reduction and riparian wetlands, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (April 10, 2018) discusses the urgency of this condition and calls for “new design, operational, political and cultural norms” to address “complexity, uncertainty and resilience.”

Rooted in one of the world’s most iconic and imperiled delta cities and focused on the collaboration across the fields of the built environment, the Tulane School of Architecture is uniquely poised to lead and convene collaborators to address these conditions as architects, planners, preservationists, landscape architects and urbanists seek new knowledge to advance climate-responsive design. Housing already some of the most recognized world leaders in the built environment addressing climate change, the Tulane Center for Climate Change and Urbanism will provide necessary infrastructure and public programming to drive public policy and influence private decision-making locally, nationally and globally.