CED student spotlight: Brenna Castro Carlson (MLA 2020) researches urban city sustainability amid climate change

Brenna Castro Carlson || 2019 Excellence in Landscape Design Award

Recipient of the 2019 Excellence in Landscape Design Award, Brenna Castro Carlson (M.L.A. ‘20) has utilized her scholarship to further her thesis project which reimagines city-planning, particularly the Sacramento metropolitan area, in the face of climate-change.

Carlson described much of her graduate research as defined by questions such as, “What would it be like if life in the American west was shaped not by the car, but instead by the way that animals move across the landscape?”

In an effort to answer the questions presented by the sustainability and connected ecological pressures of today’s world, Carlson’s prize funds her site visits, local and national, where she hopes to understand what makes urban ecosystems fail and flourish.

“I want to thank you for the support that lets us hit pause on our paychecks for a couple years while we seek out answers to our questions, the ones that make our hearts beat a little faster.

The printing costs, the price of gas for a site visit, the processing fee for data downloads – these are not the point. These might sound like small concerns, but for grad students it is truly liberating to set them aside.”