Kyle D. Brown, Ph.D. | Director | Research

My research interests have drawn me to my current position at the Lyle Center. I have grown increasingly interested in the relationship between social justice and environmental sustainability. My previous research has explored the attitudes, assumptions, and actions of environmental design professionals towards social justice issues. I continue to examine such behaviors, grounded in the realities of everyday practice, as they have important implications for planning and design theory. However, I've become particularly interested in issues of sustainability and how they intersect with such justice concerns. Social inequities are often compounded by non-regenerative systems that have adverse impacts on marginalized communities as a result of pollution, resource consumption, and environmental exploitation. As such, environmental sustainability is fundamentally a social justice issue.

The opportunities presented by the Lyle Center and its mission, will allow me to explore this intersection in the coming years. One example is the Center's work on Habitat 21: The Lyle Center Project for Sustainable Settlements. This effort, of which I am Principal Investigator seeks to develop, implement, and evaluate sustainable settlement strategies in disenfranchised communities in developing nations.

In addition to the interests described above, I maintain an interest in a variety of "hands-on" planning and design projects, many of which are student-driven efforts. These include a variety of large-scale landscape-planning projects, as well a community service-learning projects pursued through various courses in our graduate and undergraduate programs within the College of Environmental Design. These projects engage real communities (frequently marginalized) and real issues, and propose visionary, but practical solutions.