Introduction to the EDRA50 Proceedings

Conference proceedings are considered important ways of scholarly communication. At the EDRA50 Conference held in Brooklyn, NY in May of 2019, presenters and participants represented more than 35 countries, registered in record numbers surpassing 700 attendees, and engaged in a variety of session formats and programs.

For 50 years, the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) has served to advance research, practice, teaching, and networking toward improving an understanding of the relationships among people, their built environments, and natural eco-systems. From the EDRA website: “The mission of EDRA is to provide a collaborative, multidisciplinary community to connect theory, research, teaching, and practice to recognize, create and advocate for environments that are responsive to diverse human needs. EDRA is committed to equity, inclusion, and respect for all persons.”

The conference theme of “Sustainable Urban Environments” centered around urban design and changing environmental behavior at the global scale. With a lens on the present and an expanded look both 50 years back and when possible, 50 years forward, the vast community of participants shared research, inquiry, healthy debate, art, lived experience, and vision pushing the boundaries in broad ways within the field(s) of environmental design.

Our decision to bring forth the 50th Proceedings as an Open Access publication was informed by the mission and theme of the conference, and by the imperative for scholarship today to best reflect our global collective insights and our local practices. By integrating environmentally friendly digital scholarship into our teaching, practice, inquiry, and research, we move the field forward. By leaning into the scholarly practice of Open Access, we intend to make this shared body of work discoverable to both members and non-members alike and remove the selective limits of institutions acquiring the record of our work based on purchasing power alone. Open Access is, simply, the way to make the work of EDRA most easily accessible to scholars, designers, and planners in this field.

Publishing the Proceedings as Open Access is in line with the values and principles for ethical education where the technology is available, and implies responsible decision making and a commitment to access toward healthy, diverse communities of scholarship. Our ethics tell us that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. So too, should be our efforts to uphold the mission of the EDRA organization. As an Open Access publication, the contents are supported with open permissions allowing audiences to quickly gain access to, re-use, and pull data while still responsibly assigning attribution. Creative Commons standardized licensing is assigned throughout the Proceedings. Content is easily imported or exported with no vendor profiting and is non-proprietary. A liberatory technological consciousness is inseparable from environmental design in the context of sustainable urban environments. Digital scholarship that is Open Access stands to influence our intellectual, social, and political communities and practice from the point of view and interests of its users. The discourse of scholarship maintains that ideas will always be unfinished and projects ever forthcoming in need of our continued collective understanding and transformation. With easy access, people are better prepared to expect and demand critical participation in thought brought to action.

The EDRA50 Proceedings are rich, and at moments, still flawed. Various multimedia formats are integrated into the publication. By publishing digitally in this Open Access format, we add significantly to the content available to all audiences. As an intentional departure from the “good enough” PDF digital publications we have come to rely upon, with this Open Access format we are able to share the full graphic copy of accepted posters, incorporate dynamic multi-media presentations, and include recordings of various plenary sessions. Creative Commons licensing supports bold distribution. When limited access also limits ease of use, then we are wildly at odds with even the most basic practices of accessibility. Global dissemination of the Proceedings benefits the intentions of contributors dedicated to advancing the field(s). The editors welcome those who consult the Proceedings to be in communication (proceedings@edra.org) in support of the enhancements still to come in order to revise, complete, and benefit this choice in format.

How to use this Open Access document

Scroll through the initial screens of the Proceedings and take note of the structure and organization of the work. Recognitions, awardees, organizational leadership, keynotes, plenaries, interactive sustainable art projects captured on video, digital shorts, mobile workshops, and citation guidance and acknowledgements are contained within. Ten themes scaffold the papers, abstracts, posters, workshops, and symposia. These themes are consistent with the conference tracks as follows: Design & Advocacy: Environmental Design Research and Policy; Environmental Infrastructure, Natural Resources and Urban Ecology; Global Climate Change – Attitudes and Behavior; Heritage and Cultural Infrastructure; Participatory and Evidence-Based Strategies for Sustainable Design; Place-making: Personal, Social and Cultural Meanings of Space; Resilient Community Planning, Housing and Design; Sustainable Lifestyles and Behavior; Urban Sustainability, Equity and Globalization; and Edra@50. Use the search feature to find presentations and papers that are of interest by keyword or author name – there is no traditional index in an Open Access format such as this. Enjoy the design while viewing the contents. Browse, click and jump around, or return to the Contents page to systematically work your way through. Be inspired. The EDRA community calls for nothing less.

My best,

Amy Beth, Editor in Chief, Proceedings of the 50th Conference of the Environmental Design Research Association, 2019