Two of the five nationally selected finalist teams for the APA Smart Cities Student Design Competition are from our department. The competition aims to introduce and engage students in the Smart City discussion. Teams will present their ideas and compete for a $1,000 award at the National Planning Conference in New York on Monday, May 8, 1:20 - 2:30 pm. Read more.

The Women’s Resources Center of the Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Relations recognized 17 women earlier today in honor of International Women’s Day 2017. Congratulations to Prof. Faranak Miraftab, one of the group’s honorees! The annual celebration honors local efforts in our campus community to improve the lives of women across the globe. Faranak was recognized for her interdisciplinary research empirically based in Latin America, Southern Africa, Middle East and North American, which draws on feminist, transnational and urban scholarship. Read more.

Work on the Multimodal Corridor Enhancement Project (MCORE) gets underway. The first phase of the project will close Green Street between First Street and the Canadian National Railroad tracks. Through traffic will not be allowed, but access to properties will be maintained via alternative routes. Businesses will remain open during construction.

The $44 million MCORE project represents a significant investment in public infrastructure that will bring streets to a state of good repair while enhancing connections between the cities' downtown centers and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus. Read more.

Professor Bambang Bodjonegoro, Minister of National Development Planning (Head of Bappenas) returned to our department recently to present on Indonesian Development and Planning. Also visiting was Pungky Sumadi, Expert Staff to Minister for Leading Sector and Infrastructure Development, also a PhD alumnus. Read more.

Relationship between Urban Population Densities and the Carbon Efficiency of Public Transit and Private Vehicles is the title of Prof. Lee's project for the NSF's Geography Spatial Sciences (GSS) Program. Read more.