Sara Jensen Carr, Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture, has been contributing to the important conversations surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, sharing her valuable insight from a design perspective. As the virus continues to spread, and as cities around the world  continue to shut down, many architecture and design experts are exploring the relationship between disease and public space – and the potential value of physical spaces, like public parks, during an epidemic.

Professor Carr’s upcoming book, The Topography of Wellness: Health and the American Urban Landscape, dives into a similar topic, examining landscape responses to six historical urban epidemics and the implication for current and future practice. She has been able to apply this research – as well as her broader research about the connections between landscape, human health, urban ecology, and design – to current discussions taking place as the world continues to respond to, and find ways to prevent the increased spread of, coronavirus.

Her contributions have been featured in the following:

The New York Times
Density Is Normally Good for Us. That Will Be True After Coronavirus, Too.

Fast Company
How we can redesign cities to fight future pandemics

CNN
Our cities may never look the same again after the pandemic

Curbed
Design in the Age of Pandemic

The Boston Globe
Cities in the age of coronavirus, and after

Architectural Digest
Health and Disease Have Always Shaped Our Cities. What Will Be the Impact of COVID-19?

The Guardian
Smart lifts, lonely workers, no towers or tourists: architecture after coronavirus

Landscape Architecture Magazine
In Public: Honolulu

Capita (Video)
The Topography of Wellness: A conversation with architect Sara Jensen Carr

WNYC’s The Takeaway
Is the Coronavirus Changing How We Look At Public Spaces?

History
How Pandemics Spurred Cities to Make More Green Space for People

The Topography of Wellness: Health and the American Urban Landscape is being released next year from the University of Virginia Press. In 2019, Professor Carr won a Graham Foundation grant to support the book. Last year, she was also recognized as the first recipient of the biennial Oregon | Places Prize from the University of Oregon in partnership with Places Journal.