WSU Urban Studies Blog

Students in the Spring 2026 Urban Art class tried their hands at sculpture this week.   During an in-class activity, they created forms of their own choosing including a butterfly, a minion, a blue mermaid, and a fish out of water.  One Urban Studies major, Salvatore Smarra, decided to sculpt the professor.  (That's Helena in the background photobombing the pic.) Here's a close-up of the "artwork." And just like that, Sal failed the class.  😉 (JK)

Dr. Conroy and Urban Studies students Abby Rickert, Ben Barter, and Alexa James attended a Central Mass Regional Planning Commission event this week entitled, "Walking Through the Past, Present, and Future with [Urban Planner] Jeff Speck." The event was to present recent developments associated with the  Vernon Connected  Project, and Speck was the keynote. While he presented conclusions from his writing -- the 4 core rules of creating walkable places --   he also talked about these principles might be used in Worcester.     The Vernon Connected Project, in fact, which is being done by Speck's firm (Speck-Dempsey), seeks to apply principles of a walkable city to the Vernon Sr. corridor and bridge that leads into Kelley Square.  As it notes on a website, it is pursuing a " reimagined interchange designed for connecting; where a dividing highway is now transformed into a unifying corridor; where community art, reduced noise pollution, and sustainabl...

Urban Studies graduate students enrolled in Professor Timothy Murphy’s course, NM-901 The Nonprofit World, collaborated on group presentations that focused on initiatives of one of WSU's community partners - a Rio de Janeiro based nonprofit called Catalytic Communities (CatComm).  The students considered how CatComm’s four initiatives - Favala 101 , Narrative Shifting , Sustainable Favelas , and Land Rights - relate to the organization’s mission, which is to  "generate models for effective community-led and people-centered development of informal settlements in cities across the globe, based on the experience of Rio de Janeiro, with the city’s favelas achieving recognition of their heritage status and residents being served as equal citizens. This is done through a combination of education, research, training, networking exchanges, strategic communications, technology, mapping, advocacy, and participatory planning." A major takeaway from the presentations was the degree ...