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Infrastructure in
America

is a project at Columbia University's Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture connecting infrastructure, politics, and life.

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Cid Standifer

How Racism Makes the Weather in Cleveland (And Elsewhere)

A 2020 study found that formerly redlined neighborhoods are hotter than other areas in the same city. Here’s why.

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A residential street is lined with tress with changing leaves on the right side, and on the left a row of houses showing solar panels on the roofs.

(Cid Standifer)

Bailey Basham

The South's Communication Infrastructure Can't Withstand Climate Change

When Hurricane Zeta made landfall on the Gulf Coast in October, 2.6 million people in the southeast US were left in the dark. From the Mississippi coast to Atlanta to smaller cities like Anniston, Alabama, people waited—some for days, others for upward of two weeks—in living rooms and kitchens lit by candlelight for their power to return, reliant on the longevity of cellphone batteries and mobile chargers. 

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Drawn graphic showing diagram of communications infrastructure and climate change

Communications Infrastructure and Climate Change (Illustration by Ellen O'Grady)

Amelyn Ng

Beyond Business as Usual: BIM and the Future of Public Works

Building Information Modeling (BIM), at its simplest, is a “Google Docs” of architectural production. Allowing many hands to work simultaneously on complex building projects, BIM is an industry-strength digital modeling ethic that generates drawings, schedules costs and components, simulates construction sequences, and coordinates global teams—all from a shared information database.

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Building Information Modeling of the ERDC headquarters building created by the Yates Construction team

Partial BIM model of the USACE's Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) headquarters, designed by USACE and built by Yates Construction, 2017 (US Army ERDC website)


Adriana Garriga-Lopez

Agua Dulce
October 16, 2019

Amelyn Ng

Beyond Business as Usual: BIM and the Future of Public Works
August 14, 2020

Frances Negrón-Muntaner

Blackout: What Darkness Illuminated in Puerto Rico
March 2, 2018

Henderson Beck, Andres Julian Alvarez Davila, Anays M. González Sánchez

Centering Community Design
September 8, 2020

Henderson Beck, Andres Julian Alvarez Davila, Anays M. González Sánchez

Centering Community Design
September 8, 2020

Henderson Beck, Andres Julian Alvarez Davila, Anays M. González Sánchez

Centering Community Design
September 8, 2020

Nina Misuraca Ignaczak

Climate Resilience on Detroit’s East Side
September 16, 2019

Cassandra Shepard

The Colonial Continuum: A Critique of New Orleans' Rebuilding Process
March 7, 2019

Danielle Purifoy, Louise Seamster

Creative Extraction: Black Towns in White Space
April 22, 2019

Danielle Purifoy, Louise Seamster

Creative Extraction: Black Towns in White Space
April 22, 2019

Eddy Almonte

Demolishing C.J. Peete
April 10, 2019

Haisten Willis

For 30 years, Georgia and Florida have been fighting over water
September 30, 2019

Kim Stanley Robinson

For the Green New Deal
January 24, 2020

Danielle Purifoy

How Europe’s Wood Pellet Appetite Worsens Environmental Racism in the US South
October 5, 2020

Carly Berlin

How Louisiana's Oil and Gas Industry Uses Prison Labor
March 24, 2020

Cid Standifer

How Racism Makes the Weather in Cleveland (And Elsewhere)
January 28, 2021

Anays M. González Sánchez

How-to: USAspending.gov
November 5, 2020

Avery Gregurich

Is the Mississippi River Ready for Climate Change?
August 13, 2019

Andrea Ballestero

Living with Aquifers
July 26, 2019

Xander Peters

Louisiana Coastal Communities Forced to Make Expensive Choice: Fix Homes or Flee
August 7, 2020

Eddy Almonte, Alicia French, Jiazhen Lin, Maria Alejandra Linares

Mapping an Unnatural Disaster
June 3, 2019

Eddy Almonte, Alicia French, Jiazhen Lin, Maria Alejandra Linares

Mapping an Unnatural Disaster
June 3, 2019

Eddy Almonte, Alicia French, Jiazhen Lin, Maria Alejandra Linares

Mapping an Unnatural Disaster
June 3, 2019

Eddy Almonte, Alicia French, Jiazhen Lin, Maria Alejandra Linares

Mapping an Unnatural Disaster
June 3, 2019

Imani J. Jackson

Mold, foundation cracks, sinking houses: How a Florida Habitat for Humanity neighborhood fell apart
January 15, 2020

Austyn Gaffney

Nuclear waste in Kentucky poses threat to region facing historic flooding
December 3, 2019

Chad J. Reich

Path Dependency (Or, Appalachia is not Post-Industrial)
July 30, 2020

Elizabeth Yeampierre, Lourdes Pérez-Medina

The People's Power
April 10, 2019

Elizabeth Yeampierre, Lourdes Pérez-Medina

The People's Power
April 10, 2019

Reinhold Martin

Pittsburgh, Paris, Charlottesville: The Infrastructure Question
September 6, 2017

Ava Tomasula y Garcia

Possible Landscapes
January 6, 2020

Anna Clark

Power to the People
November 17, 2020

Maria Alejandra Linares

Preservation and Redevelopment in Post-Katrina Mississippi
April 12, 2019

Alicia French

Privatizing Public Health
April 12, 2019

Buell Center

Professional Schools of the Built Environment: A 2020 Snapshot
September 8, 2020

Max Goldner

The Professionalization of Care: Health
September 8, 2020

Jonas Staal

Propaganda (Art) Struggle
October 1, 2018

Malini Ranganathan

Property, Pipes, and Improvement
July 16, 2019

Conor Harrison, John Harwood, Hilda Lloréns, Agustín Irizarry Rivera, Canay Özden-Schilling, Abby Spinak

Public Electricity: A Digital Roundtable
September 18, 2019

Conor Harrison, John Harwood, Hilda Lloréns, Agustín Irizarry Rivera, Canay Özden-Schilling, Abby Spinak

Public Electricity: A Digital Roundtable
September 18, 2019

Conor Harrison, John Harwood, Hilda Lloréns, Agustín Irizarry Rivera, Canay Özden-Schilling, Abby Spinak

Public Electricity: A Digital Roundtable
September 18, 2019

Conor Harrison, John Harwood, Hilda Lloréns, Agustín Irizarry Rivera, Canay Özden-Schilling, Abby Spinak

Public Electricity: A Digital Roundtable
September 18, 2019

Conor Harrison, John Harwood, Hilda Lloréns, Agustín Irizarry Rivera, Canay Özden-Schilling, Abby Spinak

Public Electricity: A Digital Roundtable
September 18, 2019

Conor Harrison, John Harwood, Hilda Lloréns, Agustín Irizarry Rivera, Canay Özden-Schilling, Abby Spinak

Public Electricity: A Digital Roundtable
September 18, 2019

Nikhil Anand

Public Water and the Intimacy of Hydraulics
November 27, 2019

Marisol LeBrón

Puerto Rico's War on Its Poor
December 12, 2018

Andy Horowitz

The Racial Strife That Can Blow in With a Hurricane
August 25, 2017

Maria Alejandra Linares

Reforming “Resilience,” Erasing “Climate”
December 9, 2019

Shea Howell

Resisting Emergency Management
April 25, 2019

Catherine Coleman Flowers

Septic Injustice
May 24, 2019

Bailey Basham

The South's Communication Infrastructure Can't Withstand Climate Change
January 8, 2021

Maia Brown

Stopping Veolia: A Report from Seattle
June 20, 2019

Alicia French

Temporary Homes in Permanent Crisis
December 23, 2020

Shea Howell

Thinking for Ourselves: Reflections on Emergency Management
March 27, 2017

Andrea Muehlebach

Toward a Social Infrastructure
December 9, 2019

Peter Marcuse

Un-Natural Disasters, Recursive Resilience, Unjust Compensation, Visionless Planning
June 15, 2013

Elizabeth A. Povinelli

The Urban Intensions of Geontopower
May 3, 2019

Alon Schwabe, Daniel Fernández Pascual

What is Above is What is Below
May 21, 2019

Alon Schwabe, Daniel Fernández Pascual

What is Above is What is Below
May 21, 2019

Danielle Purifoy, Louise Seamster

What is environmental racism for?
July 22, 2020

Danielle Purifoy, Louise Seamster

What is environmental racism for?
July 22, 2020

Rachel Havrelock, Kathleen Blackburn

What to do with the Chicago River?
February 24, 2020

Rachel Havrelock, Kathleen Blackburn

What to do with the Chicago River?
February 24, 2020

Alison Stine

When the World is Remade, Make It Like Appalachia
April 24, 2020

Jacinta Ruru

Who are your waters?
July 9, 2019

Jiazhen Lin

Who's Managing Booker T. Washington High?
April 9, 2019

Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Why Are So Many Fascist Monuments Still Standing in Italy?
October 5, 2017

Eamon Whalen

Will Minneapolis’s Upper Harbor Terminal Project Be Good for Its Neighbors?
October 9, 2020

Kate Aronoff

With a Green New Deal, Here's What the World Could Look Like for the Next Generation
December 5, 2018

Zachary Lamb, Todd E. Vachon

Working for a Just Adaptation
February 6, 2020

Zachary Lamb, Todd E. Vachon

Working for a Just Adaptation
February 6, 2020

Marcela Olivera

Working with the Commons
June 13, 2019

Power

is part of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, organized by and with many contributors.
© 2019 Columbia University

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