In the midst of our battle to stop the Byhalia Oil Pipeline from its proposed route atop the Memphis Sand Aquifer, founding Board members—Ward Archer and Jim Kovarik—made this video in February 2021. After a two-year tussle with billion-dollar oil interests, Byhalia pulled its permits and canceled its pipeline in July 2021. We used this […]
Steve Barlow wrote this article about how Memphis is fighting the blighting influences. Rundown: Memphis Fights Blight from Key Public Strategies on Vimeo.
The first regional URSYS workshop took place in Minneapolis from April 21 to 23 and engaged 37 researchers and community stakeholders. The workshop’s goal was to begin creating cross-disciplinary research collaborations among stakeholders in the MRB with the potential to identify themes and sites for future interdisciplinary grant proposals and projects. Participants were encouraged to […]
URSYS Steering Committee member Ulrike Passe was honored to be invited to attend the Mississippi River Summit organized by the Great Plains Action Society. The summit occurred from May 11 to 14th in the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa. The Great Plains Action Society organized the Mississippi River Summit to advance the leadership of […]
Iowa State University Architecture Professor Kimberly Zarecor is quoted extensively in an Aug. 20 Cedar Rapids Gazette article by reporter Tom Barton titled “Rural Iowa continues to lose population. How some small towns are working to ‘shrink smart.’“ The article was a preview of the Gazette’s Iowa Ideas 2023 Virtual Conference on the “Urban-Rural Divide.” You can visit the Rural Shrink Smart project for more information. Professor Kimberly Zarecor
Two Iowa State University students, Keyhani Mahsa, and Josey Weaver, were selected to serve as interns at the 2023 LSU Coastal Ecosystem Design Studio Summer Institute. Their engagement at the Summer Institute demonstrates one of the many benefits of professional exchanges among participants in the URSYS consortium. During the months of June and July, 20 graduate and undergraduate students from around the world representing seven universities worked in the heat and humidity of Baton Rouge at the Water Campus. Interns also conducted field research in South Louisiana and along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Four teams of five each looked […]
The second URSYS workshop was held at the Center for River Studies at the LSU Water Campus on November 3-5, 2023. The workshop brought 20 researchers and community stakeholders from Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Memphis, Tennessee, together with researchers and community stakeholders from Louisiana, to continue discussing common research themes along the urban-rural gradient of the cities along the Mississippi River. Research themes were discussed in working groups on Community-engaged research methods, Storytelling as data collection, Water challenges such as nutrient and stormwater trading, Urban nature and Forest biodiversity, Urban Heat Island mitigation and Climate risk resilience mapping, Vacant Land related Urban Policy& Planning issues […]
