Based on what I’ve seen in my first term here, the education U.Va. provides to its graduate students in Architecture and Landscape Architecture is excellent. The skill level of the students is very high when it comes to representing their ideas, and the level of engagement with international and regional urban social justice issues is commendable. But if someone asked me whether - from my professional perspective - there’s a gap in what is being taught and learned versus what “should” be, I would have to say yes, that I believe there is one.

We live in a time when most people don’t realize the enormity of the changes that are beginning to happen to our biophysical world, and the implications those changes have for our social worlds. That’s strange, given the incredible level of information flow that we are exposed to and participate in daily. What I sometimes refer to for the sake of argument as “the American media bubble” can make it seem to a reasonable person that the environmental changes which are now being observed in relationship to climate change are minor, and will come with benefits as well as costs. Very few educated Americans, people who were both born with talent and had the privilege of advanced study, have read the reports and summaries of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change. Perhaps even fewer have read the Stern Review, in which Nicholas Stern, the Finance Minister of the United Kingdom and former chief economist of the World Bank, predicted that one likely consequence of global climate disruptions is a deep and global economic depression.

Let me be clear, however, that I’m no alarmist by predisposition. There are no canned goods stored in my basement, even if maybe there should be. I’m a gambler, prone to believing that cities are a new phenomenon that has not yet fully emerged as an artifact and expression of human culture, and that they (or rather, we) can adapt to change. But the fact that most of the people who are designing buildings, infrastructure, and built landscapes in the United States are not paying serious attention to the risks of our situation is not evidence of gambling, it’s evidence of anachronism. And even if it is a conscious gamble on the part of some policy makers or design professionals, it’s an unethical one, since the people who have the most to lose are not being consulted on their willingness to take on the risks.

The situation is complicated by the fact that there are two categories of action needed simultaneously. Our behavior, our buildings, our landscapes and our machines must become much more energy efficient in order to limit the degree of climate disruptions. And at the same time, we need to propose designs that will allow cities to adapt to more extreme weather events, floods, droughts, water shortages and rising sea levels. These designs will probably occur in a context of very limited public funds, and need to address both function and social inequities. Furthermore, unless we give up on biodiversity, there’s an almost overwhelming set of problems to address in order to help non-human species survive these changes and protect ourselves from the consequences of losing them.

In the last few decades, cities have begun to adopt and implement more ecologically-based policies and designs. From Stockholm to Seattle and Vancouver to Los Angeles, urban districts have been taking on the challenges of meeting new functional goals. Instead of applying static approaches alone, design theories and practice have started to incorporate the aesthetic and functional aspects of dynamic ecological systems.As a community of scholars, practitioners and teachers, we need to engage the real magnitude of the challenges we face and, in my view, we need to sharpen our priorities.

The implications for our work in design and planning at U.Va. are significant and immediate. Our students will need to propose infrastructure systems and site-scale strategies that are affordable, equitable and effective supporters of both ecosystems and neighborhoods. Are we teaching the right skills? Are we helping our students understand the dynamics of environmental, political and economic changes that will affect their work during the next few decades? Are the values of social justice, beauty, environmental health and inclusive design processes sufficient tools with which to enter the arena of major change in cities? Or are they instead the compass that should guide the use of more specific (and more strategic) professional tools and creative skills?

The good news is that so many faculty and students at U.Va. have already begun to take on parts of this very large task. Critical issues are being addressed in studios on New Orleans and Mexico City, in projects building educational barges and modular housing, and others addressing social justice in Washington DC and coastal Virginia. My question is, are we dealing with these issues in ways that take advantage of our collective expertise about how the world is changing? Should we be asking more radically integrated questions? Should we be partnering with other schools to provide greater benefit to society as a whole, rather than competing for the same limited pool of grants?

However we answer these questions, this is unequivocally our time and our place. As Hannah Arendt wrote, “The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition.” We have the unique opportunity to learn something about what it means to be human in our time. Our biggest challenge may be to capitalize on our own very human ability to adapt. I would like to call on students and faculty to look at the predictions for change with scholar’s eyes, and to take a position. I hope that position will gracefully and equitably treat environmental adaptation as our most significant priority for design.

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