School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning
Societal challenges are increasingly complex, as they include interactions between physical environments, built environments and people. With 54 percent of the world’s population living in cities, health and sustainability require urban planning that is informed by knowledge of earth processes and human interactions with space and place.
Ranked No. 7 in the world by the National Research Council, ASU’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning integrates the tools of geography and urban planning to address the world’s most pressing and complex challenges.
With strength in areas such as urban climatology and Geographical Information Science (GIS), the school is uniquely poised to address issues such as the impact of climate change on urban sustainability and population health, how to best use novel geographic or map data for smart urban design, how active transportation is a mechanism for sustainability, and the impacts of human disturbance on earth systems, plants and wildlife.