Nazia described challenges confronted by her Graduate Design Studio, tasked with developing a set of objectives for districts based on strategic outreach, research, and analysis. Key challenges and factors are identified, but an overall, cross-sectoral decision-making framework remains a critical challenge to prioritize and act. While national-scale; city-scale and building-scale sustainability rating systems have been developed; very few address the district-scale; and this is where we primarily operate as Urban Designers. She also discussed how students applied the emerging Eco-District protocol as a planning and design framework, and some unique characteristics of that district scale to address resilience and sustainability.

Link to conference video