Jeffrey Hou | An Island Press author

Jeffrey Hou

Jeffrey Hou is Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington–Seattle. Focusing on design activism, public space, and cross-cultural placemaking, he is an author and editor of several books, including Greening Cities, Growing Community: Learning from Seattle’s Urban Community Gardens (2009), Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (2010), Transcultural Cities: Border-Crossing and Placemaking (2013), Now Urbanism: the Future City is Here (2015), and Messy Urbanism: Understanding the “Other” Cities of Asia (2016). Hou is a leading scholar in community design and service-learning education. In a career that spans across the Pacific, he has worked with indigenous tribes, farmers, and fishers in Taiwan, neighborhood residents in Japan, villagers in China, and inner-city immigrant youths and elders in North American cities. He is recipient of EDRA Places Book Award in 2010 and 2012 and the CELA Award of Excellence in Service-Learning Education in 2011.

#ForewordFriday: Democratic Design Edition

For decades, collaborative design has helped enliven neighborhoods and promote racial, economic, and social justice. But in an era marked by climate change, growing income inequality, and major advances in technology, designers are acknowledging the limitations of public forums and other conventional methods of community engagement.