Georgia Tech has announced the four communities that will be part of the 2020 Georgia Smart cohort—with three of the four projects led by CEE faculty members. The 2020 winning communities— Clayton County and the cities of Sandy Springs, Savannah, and Valdosta—will work with Georgia Tech and other community partners to improve their quality of life by promoting walkability, streamlining bus service, managing traffic signals and more.

Researchers at Georgia Tech's School of Civil and Environmental Engineering who have been studying the decline of bus ridership have found a demographic clue that could explain declining bus ridership numbers. 

Kari Watkins, the Frederick Olmstead Law Associate Professor, and Simon Berrebi, a post-doctoral fellow, compared bus-stop data going back to 2012 in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Miami and Portland, Ore., four notably different areas where transit agencies automatically count passengers as they board the bus. 

As new roads and buildings pop up in communities around the country, Chuck Marohn believes that the way that the United States is—and has been—developing for decades is  actually largely counterproductive. Marohn is the founder and president of Strong Towns, an organization dedicated to creating more resilient communities through strategic growth. Marohn visited Georgia Tech for a conversation about the future of urban design and transportation hosted by professors Ellen Dunham-Jones and Kari Watkins.