Resilient Cities Housing Initiative (RCHI)

he Resilient Housing Initiative (RCHI), directed by Professor Lawrence Vale, explores the ways that shelter and settlements can be designed to anticipate and respond to the 21st century environmental and security challenges of an urbanized and urbanizing world. At its core, RCHI investigates the challenges of developing and redeveloping the housing environments of the least advantaged dwellers in a city-region. In this context, the effort to design and sustain housing is about far more than the appearance of that housing; it is about the contested politics of its siting, programing, financing, policy, and integration with larger urban networks and the public realm. RCHI supports integrated scholarship, cross-disciplinary curriculum development, and innovative practice that bring together housing design, housing policy, urban design, environmental and energy policy, real estate development, new media technologies, and the visual arts. Housing by itself cannot be “resilient” unless it also helps residents cope with the simultaneous challenges of urban violence, dysfunctional governance, economic struggle, and a changing climate.