Design School Receives Grant For Research in Urbanization

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has granted a research group from the Graduate School of Design a $375,100 renewal fund to conclude its study of urban development on the Massachusetts Bay South Shore.

The money will enable the eight faculty members to conclude their three-year collection of data on the eight-town area under investigation and their evaluation of the effect of such developments as soil erosion and taxation changes on urbanization.

The project will also include for the first time an urban planning workshop involving students and state and local government officials, H. James Brown, associate professor of City and Regional Planning and a member of the research team, said yesterday.

Funding for the project, entitled "The Interaction Between Urbanization and Land: Quality and Quantity in Environmental Planning and Design," now totals almost $1.3 million.

The project is being funded by the Research Applied to National Needs program (RANN) of the NSF. The program is an "attempt to generate research used and applied by people," in this case in the area of city and regional planning, Brown said.

RANN is funding several other research programs in the United States for the purpose of developing models to improve the management of land. Brown added.

Carl F. Steinitz, professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design, and Peter P. Rogers, associate professor of City and Regional Planning, are the principal directors of the project.