Category: Urban Planning


  • Exploring Modern Mobility in City Planning

    For the Fall 2021 semester I was invited by the Department Chair of Urban Planning at Ball State, Scott Truex, to develop and lead a class related to transportation planning. After about a thousand emails and several phone calls, we aligned on Plan 498/598, Exploring Modern Mobility. Students were engaged in a semester long journey […]

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  • Promoting a Sustainable Future

    What is a brownfield? According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it is a property that the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant. It is estimated that there are more than 450,000 brownfields in the U.S., and Muncie […]

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  • College of Architecture and Planning Student Teams Advance to Finals of Solar Decathlon Competition

    All six of Ball State’s student teams from the University’s College of Architecture and Planning (CAP) competing in this year’s Solar Decathlon Design and Build Challenges—a  U.S. Department of Energy competition—have advanced to the finals in the categories of New Housing, Retrofit Housing, Attached Housing, and Office Building and Education Building. Five of the six teams are participating […]

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  • Why Lohren Deeg Draws

    I draw to record the mysteries and complexities of the built environment, so that the lessons can be applied in the design process later. Sketching on location uses multiple senses, makes conversation with bystanders, and arguably stimulates a better quality of memory and recollection of a place better than a photograph. The global movement known […]

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  • Experiencing CAP Asia

    I first participated in CAP Asia in the Spring of 2005 when I joined Nihal Perera, a faculty member in urban planning, and a group of eighteen students around the middle of their trip. I was arriving to participate in a scheduled two-week building workshop, which was to take place in India, but the plan […]

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  • Students to teach city planning skills to high schoolers this fall

    Local high school students will soon be learning about urban planning, thanks to a grant provided by Ball State University Discovery Group. Saturday workshops are scheduled this fall semester for Muncie area high school students at the Urban Planning storefront studio at the Muncie Mall.   The workshop, called UrbanPlan, is a scenario-based engaged workshop developed […]

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  • Consider a Certificate in Sustainability

    The Graduate Certificate in Sustainability is administered through the Academy for Sustainability in the R. Wayne Estopinal College of Architecture and Planning. The certificate recognizes the need for participants to work across topical disciplines. And whether citizens are educated as designers or function as participants in the design activity, they collectively must arrive at strategic […]

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  • Chicagoland Internship Pairs Senior with MURP Grad

    BY WILL SNYDER, senior My name is Will Snyder, and this summer, I am an economic development intern with the Village of Wheeling, Ill. My work primarily focuses on business development within Wheeling’s three TIF districts. I help market our restaurant and retail build-out grant to new businesses choosing to locate in our TIFs, call […]

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