A new initiative in Lehigh’s College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) is bringing together faculty and students from across the University to research and develop solutions to pressing challenges faced by small cities. Launched in January, the Small Cities Lab offers an interdisciplinary approach to place-based research and participatory design, tackling issues such as lack of affordable housing, urban ecology and greenspace, pollution, community health, food insecurity, and more in communities with less than 250,000 people.

The initiative, initially funded by CAS Dean Robert Flowers, has been championed by Wes Hiatt, an architect and assistant professor in the department of art, architecture and design, and Karen Beck Pooley, professor of practice in the political science department and director of the graduate program in environmental policy. The two are serving as the lab’s faculty co-directors. They proposed the project with support from Nicholas Sawicki, chair of the department of art, architecture and aesign, where the lab resides. A core group of 12 faculty representing multiple academic disciplines has been meeting to determine how the lab can grow and advance its work. The lab is thought to be the first of its kind at a U.S. university focusing exclusively on small cities.

Read the full story from CAS News.