Creating Sustainable Places: A Comprehensive Approach to Sustainable Urban Design
Mar 12, 2026 — 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The André Gauthier Sustainable Cities Initiative is pleased to host Nico Larco, professor at the University of Oregon and a world‑renowned expert in sustainable urban planning, whose pioneering work helps cities integrate technological innovation and ecological imperatives into the design of tomorrow.
Sustainable Urban Design
Despite wide agreement about its role in overall sustainability goals, physical planning and design remain a complicated, largely fragmented field of practice. The diversity of issues, scales, disciplines, and contexts make it challenging to deliver integrated outcomes that measurably advance sustainability goals. To address this challenge, Prof. Larco will be presenting the Sustainable Urban Design Framework, a comprehensive approach to sustainable design, collecting current research and best practices from across the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, planning, development, ecology, and environmental engineering.
The framework organizes over 50 specific urban design elements across outcome goals and scales, and can be used to guide project decisions, evaluate current and proposed conditions, and to engage a variety of stakeholders. The Sustainable Urban Design Framework is the focus of the recently published Sustainable Urban Design Handbook, a graphically rich and easy to use resource for designers, planners, developers, elected officials, and community stakeholders.
Guest Speaker
Professor Nico Larco
Nico Larco, AIA, is an urban designer, architect, and professor. He leads ELEMENT/Urban Design, a design and consulting firm, and has been a Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Oregon since 2004 where he is also the Director of the Urbanism Next Center and Co-Director of the Sustainable Cities Institute. Since 2018, he has also been a Strategic Advisor and Researcher at TNO, a Dutch national think-tank.
Prof. Larco researches and teaches sustainable urban design, has developed the Sustainable Urban Design Framework, is the lead author of the Sustainable Urban Design Handbook published in 2024, and assists cities and projects on how best to apply these principles and approaches. His work around Urbanism Next is focused on how technological advances such as shared mobility, self-driving cars, e-commerce and the sharing economy are changing city form and development. Prof. Larco assists cities and projects in future-proofing to thrive amidst these advances, has run workshops and charrettes nationally and internationally on this topic, and has coordinated work in this area with various municipal and state agencies across North America and in Europe.
Prof. Larco has published in various academic and professional journals and his work has been covered by Wired, the New York Times, Fast Company, Bloomberg News, Forbes, the Financial Times of London, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He was a Fulbright Scholar in 2012/13 in Spain at the Polytechnic University of Catalunya and at the University of Navarra, a Visiting Professor at TU Delft in 2018/19, and was a Fulbright Scholar in 2019 at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile. He has testified on his research to the US Congress, has worked on research for the European Commission, and was a speaker at TEDx College Park.