Regional and City Planning professor, Dr. Ladan Mozaffarian, has recently published an article in the prestigious Journal of Planning Literature. The article, titled “How Remote Working and Placelessness Affect Future Planning for Innovation Districts: A Systematic Review of the Literature,” examines the impacts of telework and the gig economy on planning for innovation districts. It highlights solutions to mitigate the negative effects on cities and their urban vitality.
Innovation Districts (IDs) have emerged as essential place-based strategies for economic development within urban planning and land-use policy. While existing literature covers the types of IDs and the built environment features that define them, there is a gap in understanding the role of the built environment in the context of increasing remote work and placelessness. By conducting a systematic review of the literature, this research explores how future planning for Innovation Districts will be impacted and how to tackle the challenge of rising placelessness in urban areas.
This article is part of Mozaffarian’s ongoing research on Innovation Districts and their planning and policy implications. For this project, Mozaffarian collaborated with faculty from San Jose State University (SJSU) and the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA).
The University of Oklahoma College of Architecture is proud to announce that Model Schools in the Model City, authored by Director of the Institute for Quality Communities, Amber N. Wiley, Ph.D., has been named one of ten finalists for the 2026 ASALH Book Prize for Best New Book in African American History and Culture.
This semester, students in the LA 5535 Studio: Ecological Planning and Design, led by Prof. Afsana Sharmin, took on an ambitious hypothetical project to redesign key parts of the OU campus. Their mission: to tackle the critical real-world challenge of stormwater management through innovative green design.
Petya Stefanoff, Chair of the Educational Committee with the American Planning Association, Oklahoma Chapter (APA-OK) and Gibbs College PhD candidate, has developed a new training program for local government officials. The program, focused on land use, zoning principles, and land development, recently certified its first graduates with Certified Citizen Planner status.
