ABOUT US

Designing For a Sustainable Future

The Global Urban Sustainable Center or GUSC is dedicated to advancing cross-disciplinary urban-focused research, civic engagement, and community support on issues relevant to living well in cities around the world. As the global population becomes increasingly urban, understanding cities is vital to informed decision-making and public policy at the local, national, and international levels. GUSC focuses on research to enhance sustainability and social justice in the cities of the twenty-first century. We leverage research and planning to improve the lives of impoverished and marginalized populations.

By providing a forum for collaborative scholarship and engagement across multiple countries, GUSC supports and connects urban practitioners, faculty, students, and policymakers to inform urban policy and action.

OUR STORY

GUSC’s projects encompass research, education, and action. Urban planning and architecture can remake cities to promote development and sustainability, but practitioners need to understand the complexities of local contexts and critically examine how their interventions impact social justice. We foster this education by creating virtual field trips and additional content for college classes and providing scholarships for promising students in urban planning and architecture. Our team creates innovative research on urban planning and sustainability. GUSC’s projects include material interventions to improve the quality of people’s everyday lives.

GUSC is working to build a peace center to bring people of differing religious faiths together to share space and build mutual understanding. We are also bringing these goals of education and action together by creating a pilot program, for students in architecture and construction to rehabilitate housing units that are then offered as affordable housing to families in need.