Communities of every size are facing mounting housing shortages—from overall supply constraints to the lack of affordable options. This session explores practical strategies for expanding housing availability through the experiences of a mid-sized Wisconsin city (La Crosse) and a small Minnesota community (Wabasha). Learn how each community gathers and uses data to demonstrate need, applies a range of financing tools to make projects feasible, and implements planning approaches designed to attract investors, encourage development, and deliver more housing where it’s needed most.

Biographies

Caroline Gregerson has been City Administrator for the City of Wabasha for 5 years. In her role, she manages 37 full-time and part-time employees, staffs the Wabasha Port Authority, oversees all major projects for the City including housing, transportation, child care. Prior to that role, she worked for the City of La Crosse as their Community Development Administrator for 8 years. She holds a Master’s in Public Administration from Syracuse University Maxwell School.  

Mara Keyes is the Community Development Manager for the City of La Crosse, Wisconsin. She manages federal dollars that support essential services for low-income residents – through nonprofit organizations and by building and preserving affordable housing. Her work bridges the gap between policy, programming and people to make meaningful impact in the community. Prior to her role in La Crosse Mara provided grants and loans to entrepreneurs as part of the Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corporation.  She serves on the YWCA board, is a founding board member of the La Crosse Film Academy and the Rivoli Arts District, and represents the City of La Crosse on the La Crosse Promise Board and the School District’s Early Childhood Steering Committee.

AICP CM credits:��

The post Bridging the Housing Gap: Stories from Two Midwest Communities appeared first on School of Architecture & Urban Planning.

Rather than presenting a static exhibition, Ma has reconfigured the gallery as a working ceramic studio and Earth Material Resource Center, where she foregrounds material testing, spatial limits, and slow decision-making.

“Craft is an inherently slow process,” Ma said. “My way of working involves extended periods of hesitation, testing, and reconsideration.”

Process as a shared resource

Instead of treating that indecision as something to resolve privately, she makes it visible, allowing the process to unfold within the gallery itself.

“By opening up the process and allowing it to be interrupted or disturbed,” she explained, “I make visible how decisions accumulate, shift, or fail under constraint and pressure.”

For Ma, the physical boundaries of the gallery are not incidental. “Limits of space shape how choices are made and revised over time,” she said. This semester, she thinks of her work “primarily as curating a set of conditions, tools, and materials, rather than producing discrete artifacts.”

The result is a space that operates less as a finished display and more as a laboratory for architectural thinking.

What excites Ma most about this approach is the possibility of turning process into a shared resource.

“By making my methods, tests, and material experiments visible, the work becomes something others can learn from, adapt, or question, rather than something sealed off as a finished result,” she said. “Accessibility, for me, means allowing people to see uncertainty as part of making.”

Working with untamed materials

That uncertainty is embedded in Ma’s material practice. She works with foraged local clay, paper porcelain, and recycled organic aggregates, materials that are deliberately fragile and responsive.

“I often say I choose these materials because they are free,” she said, “not in the sense of costing nothing, but in the sense of being untamed.” She describes them as “feral materials that misbehave, vary from batch to batch, and offer no guaranteed results.”

Rather than attempting to impose control, Ma frames her work as a negotiation. “Instead of asking, ‘How can I control this material?’” she said, “I ask, ‘What kind of relationship can I build with it?’”

Because these materials are locally sourced and variable, they “carry local and temporal specificity” and “resist the idea of universal, standardized solutions.” That resistance, she added, “offers an element of surprise, which is important to me.”

Material practice and architectural thinking

Ma sees clear parallels between this material practice and architectural thinking.

“Architecture often privileges control, efficiency, measurement, and repeatability,” she said. Her interests, by contrast, “lean toward fragility, uncertainty, and instability—qualities architecture typically seeks to constrain or minimize.” The intersection, she noted, “is less about utility and more about perspective.”

Within the gallery, that perspective is evident in how materials, tests, and structures are displayed. Research artifacts are carefully arranged, emphasizing care and intentionality rather than spectacle.

A culmination but not the end

As Ma nears the end of her two-year fellowship, the exhibition serves as a culmination without closure.

“My thinking has shifted from seeking resolution to sustaining inquiry,” she said. Earlier in the fellowship, she was “preoccupied with making a coherent ‘thing,’” but over time learned “to value open-ended investigation and to resist the pressure to arrive at fixed outcomes.”

The decision to transform the gallery into an Earth Material Resource Center reflects that shift. It is, Ma said, “not as a final display of knowledge, but as a platform for shared exploration and ongoing inquiry.”

An evolving space for engagement

Over the spring semester, the space will continue to change as she works in it, offering workshops and walk-in hours for students interested in hands-on material experiments.

“If the space does anything,” Ma said, “I hope it recalibrates attention toward slowness, material origins, and the care embedded in objects and spaces.”

Visitors are invited to return, observe changes, and witness making as it happens.

“We rarely witness how things come into being,” she added. “I hope visitors sense that making is not only about outcomes, but about relationships between time, matter, and care.”

Story by Oliver J. Johnson

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As data center development expands across Wisconsin and the Midwest, communities are increasingly being approached by developers seeking land, electricity, and water. While these projects can bring significant investment, they also raise complex questions related to zoning, infrastructure capacity, public finance, and environmental impacts.

This session equips planners and local officials with the foundational knowledge needed before a data center proposal arrives—and the critical questions to ask when it does. Speakers will address the wide range of data center types, Wisconsin’s 2023 data center tax exemption, local zoning and policy tools, and lessons from communities across the region. Case examples from Wisconsin, the Midwest, and the country will highlight strategies for managing, attracting, or limiting data center development in alignment with community goals.

Biographies

Allison Carlson is the Executive Director for the Wisconsin Local Government Climate Coalition. She is an energy and sustainability professional, working over 15 years across a variety of roles in market research and evaluation, government regulation and oversight, program planning, and administration. She has a keen eye toward the concerns of commissions, utilities, and local governments, allowing for more informed and actionable solutions. Professional objectives are to foster a just and clean energy economy through supporting equitable policy and effective organizational systems and processes. Allison holds a Master of Public Affairs from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BS in Finance, Economics, and International Business from UW-La Crosse.

Bridget Williams is a policy coordinator at the Great Plains Institute and facilitates the MISO Cities and Communities Coalition, a group of local governments advocating for an electric grid that supports their goals to lower emissions, strengthen resilience, promote equity, and foster economic opportunity.

In this role, Bridget conducts research, tracks regional and federal energy issues, and develops educational materials to assist local governments with engaging grid decision-makers and developing high-impact local energy policies and programs. Bridget recently organized a webinar series to discuss the water and energy impacts of data centers and levers local governments can use to align data centers with local goals. Bridget has a BS in community and regional planning from Iowa State University and lives in Milwaukee, WI.

Kevin Lahner is the City Manager for Janesville, WI, managing strategic planning and employee engagement efforts.  Recent projects include coordinating the planning for a data center and updated City zoning code. Previously he was the City Administrator for the Waukesha, WI, where he managed the daily operations and administered the City’s Five-Year Capital Improvement Plan, and Operating Budget. Kevin holds a Master of Public Administration from the University of North Texas and a BS in Communications-Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

AICP CM credits:

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Through an ongoing research initiative known as Ghost Lab, Thibodeaux and his students engage buildings with forgotten histories of use by marginalized communities. The work asks a fundamental question that sits uneasily within conventional preservation practice: how do we assign value to architecture when significant traces within were never meant to be permanent, visible, or celebrated?

“At its core, it’s a bit of an activist project,” Thibodeaux said. “But less focused on advocating for preserving specific buildings than for alternative ways of assigning value that fall outside institutionalized preservation practice.”

Challenging preservation’s blind spots

Ghost Lab grew out of a disconnect Thibodeaux observed between ongoing conversations around heritage value and the regulatory frameworks that govern preservation in the United States.

While there is increasing recognition that buildings used by marginalized groups carry historical significance, preservation standards, he says, continue to privilege material authenticity tied to an architect’s original intent or a narrowly defined “period of historical significance.”

That framework often conflicts with how marginalized communities historically engage architecture.

“Without the material, financial, or sociopolitical resources to build from scratch, marginalized groups frequently occupy and appropriate spaces not built for them,” Thibodeaux said. “Changing use, alongside a frequent need for discretion, typically results in ad-hoc manipulations of a building that—when read through existing regulating documents—are cited as offenses to a building’s material and historical value.”

The paradox, he explained, is that efforts meant to preserve buildings with heritage value for marginalized communities often require stripping away the very adaptations that made those spaces usable and safe.

Ghost Lab operates within that tension.

Reading the “ghosts” in architecture

Rather than advocating for the literal preservation of every physical trace, Thibodeaux focuses on making the human narratives behind those traces legible to the public before they are inevitably erased.

Within the Ghost Lab framework, Thibodeaux refers to these ephemeral traces as “ghosts.”

“We recognize that most of the elements we highlight are going to be stripped away,” he said. “Their legacy is charged by their eventual negation.”

Ghost Lab treats that inevitability as an opportunity. Through on-site installations and exhibitions, students connect physical remnants to the human needs that produced them. A boarded window, for example, becomes a way to understand privacy and discretion within a specific historical context.

“Our interventions allow people to consider why an original window was boarded up for part of its life,” Thibodeaux said. “We celebrate a future where the window can be restored to reconnect the building’s interior to the outside world but want the public to understand why that wasn’t always desirable.”

From archives to on-site research

Most Ghost Lab sites were identified through the , where Thibodeaux serves as a Community Advisor. While archival records provide essential context, Ghost Lab moves beyond documentation by embedding human narratives directly into architectural space.

“It’s easiest to communicate human value through human stories,” Thibodeaux said. “And most of architectural practice is about representing space to the public.”

That approach is carried forward through student-led, on-site research supported by the 51���� Office of Research, including Support for Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF) grants and an Advancing Research and Creativity (ARC) Grant.

Students are involved at every stage of a project, from early research to installation and public engagement.

One recent Ghost Lab project focused on a building at 1100 E. Kane Place. Initial SURF-supported research by Morgan Greene (BArch 2026) unfolded over multiple semesters and led to a larger ARC-funded installation developed and installed by eleven additional students in an elective studio course taught by Thibodeaux.

“The ARC Grant allowed us to lease the building for the semester and engage it in a way that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise,” he said.

Public memory activated

Community response has reinforced the project’s core premise. Visitors encountering the Kane Place exhibition often arrived with their own memories and stories prompted not by what remained, but by what was gone.

“When people re-enter these buildings, they often have more stories about what is no longer physically present than what currently is,” Thibodeaux said. “It supports the idea that negation inevitably enhances memory.”

For Thibodeaux, those moments affirm the value of slowing the erasure process long enough to acknowledge what came before.

“It feels special to allow the public to celebrate these ghosts before they are laid to rest.”

Looking ahead

A second ARC-supported Ghost Lab exhibition is planned for June, engaging another building with a forgotten history of marginalized use. As with previous projects, the site and form will be shaped by access, student research, and community collaboration.

In the short term, Thibodeaux hopes the work encourages people to pause before dismissing buildings that appear too altered—or too “deviant”—to save. In the long term, the ambition is broader.

“We can only hope that once enough folks on the ground start to look at buildings differently, shifts in value judgment might make their way up the chain,” he said.

That could inform new standards of regulation in preservation practice.

“It’s a lofty goal,” he added. “But the first step is getting in the door before the wrecking ball does.”

Story by Oliver J. Johnson

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For Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD), the historic storm exposed familiar vulnerabilities in the region’s aging infrastructure. For University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee urban planning students, it became a living policy lab.

Teaching in real time

“We hold year-end meetings with our Master of Urban Planning students each May, and many of the students over the last few years have expressed interest in addressing environmental challenges,” said Dr. Robert Schneider. “So I was looking for an environmental policy topic for my Fall 2025 Planning Policy Analysis course.”

When the flood struck, Schneider saw both urgency and opportunity.

“The immediate shock from seeing people in our community being caught in floodwaters and news over the next week about flooded basements, damaged houses, and massive loss of personal belongings drew me toward how we could help the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District with any aspect of their efforts to address flooding,” Schneider said.

Within weeks, Schneider connected with MMSD staff and developed a case study for his Planning Policy Analysis course.

Working from within challenge

Students focused on , which encourages homeowners to disconnect foundation drains from the sanitary sewer system to reduce basement backups.

“Many planning projects aim to improve complex systems to produce long-term public benefits,” he said. “Examining options to improve the effectiveness of the PPII Reduction program was an ideal fit for a planning analysis topic due to its challenges and the many possible options to improve the program.”

More than 100,000 older homes in the region still need to disconnect foundation drains from the sanitary sewer system. Construction can be disruptive and expensive, and some property owners do not realize their foundation drains pose a risk at all. Meanwhile, MMSD must operate within a limited outreach budget.

Against that backdrop, students debated alternatives, evaluated tradeoffs, and presented recommendations directly to MMSD leaders.

Strategies ranged from adjusting financial incentives to refining outreach and advertising, targeting the highest-risk properties, or working with municipalities on regulatory approaches.

From analysis to action

For MMSD, the partnership was more than an academic exercise.

“MMSD sees tremendous value in working with students,” said Hannah Johnson, MMSD Public Engagement Specialist. “Anytime there are residents, community members or students who are interested and engaged in this topic, it benefits the MMSD PPII program tremendously.”

Several recommendations moved quickly from presentation into practice.

“There are a few items that came up in the presentations that we have already started on, including connecting with Neighborhood Improvement Districts (NIDs) in the City of Milwaukee to pair our efforts with theirs and using past Pipe Check participants to create testimonials for the program,” Johnson said.

The agency also reviewed homeowner cost trends and adjusted financial support accordingly.

“One of the largest changes in 2026 financial incentives was an increase in the Foundation Drain Disconnection financial incentive from $2,500 to $3,800, based on trends in homeowner costs.”

Preparing urban planners to make a difference

And MMSD’s exploration of student ideas will continue beyond the initial case.

 “We are also planning to explore a few of the other ideas, in 2026 and coming years, including collaborating with the Fresh Coast Resource Center to find opportunities to partner with the Green Summer program, finding other outreach and partnership opportunities, and using characters that help tell the story to homeowners,” she said.

For students, seeing movement matters.

“They love to see their work making a difference for their clients and the community,” Schneider said. “This gives them a great foundation for their professional planning careers.”

Story by Oliver J. Johnson

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The Fitz features pushed-in and pulled-out brick patterns executed in 16” long clay bricks on street-front facades and light gray concrete bricks on side and rear facades. Horizontal limestone sills become bands that belt the building.

Located in a city historic district, the project has also received the award for “Best New Building in a Historic District” from Milwaukee’s Historic Preservation Commission.

The post Building designed by Jim Shields garners awards by Wisconsin Masonry Alliance and Milwaukee Historic Preservation Commission appeared first on School of Architecture & Urban Planning.

Before his death, Glickman asked his daughter, Leah Glickman, to mail more than 100 postcards to friends, colleagues, and former students. Each card read: “If you’re reading this I’m dead, and I really liked you,” a characteristically direct and heartfelt farewell. 

In the article, writer Desiree Anello explores Glickman’s approach to mortality and Leah Glickman’s experience carrying out her father’s final gesture, reflecting on the many lives he impacted through his teaching and mentorship. 

To read the full article, visit��.����

The post People��Magazine highlights��former SARUP professor’s final��message to��students and��colleagues�� appeared first on School of Architecture & Urban Planning.

He also outlines how planning policy, land use, and community partnerships can help address these disparities. The coverage highlights the role urban planning play in advancing more equitable food systems, a topic that Harris is uniquely positioned to discuss as founding director of 51����’s Center for Equity Practice & Planning Justice.

Watch the full segment on .

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The story also draws on the perspective of Urban Planning Professor and Co-chair Carolyn Esswein, who discusses how earlier housing and homeownership initiatives spearheaded by longtime SARUP faculty member and acclaimed urban planner Welford Sanders helped strengthen the corridor’s business ecosystem. Esswein also shares insight on challenges that remain for the corridor, such as vacant parcels and financing barriers.

Read the story on .

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Partnering with Associate Professor Alex Timmer and the Design and Construction Initiative, the team is developing park infrastructure that can be fabricated using urban wood reclaimed from trees removed throughout the city.

“This creates a meaningful closed-loop system,” CDS Director Krisann Rehbein said. “Trees that once shaded Milwaukee’s streets and parks are being transformed into public amenities that will continue serving residents for years to come.”

Designing for comfort, inclusion and community

The project began with a hands-on workshop where students explored what makes public seating both functional and welcoming. CDS hosted the session and invited students to participate in a “seating scavenger hunt” across campus, studying different bench designs and how people interact with them.

The exercise helped students identify what works and what doesn’t when designing for diverse users and public environments.

“The project taught us that designing for the public isn’t always about the aesthetic appeal,” Bachelor of Architecture student Ariel Johnson said. “It’s about the ability to maintain inclusion while also keeping a majority of the community satisfied or physically comfortable with a design.”

An important component of the workshop was a lesson in ergonomics led by Suzanna Tomich Waterfield from 51����’s College of Health Professions & Sciences. Her insights helped students better understand comfort, accessibility, support, and the physical factors that influence how people experience public seating.

From classroom concepts to city fabrication

Using those insights, students created preliminary bench concepts, with selected participants now advancing into a paid internship phase. During this stage, students will refine their ideas, iterate on their designs, and build full-scale prototypes.

The long-term vision is for Milwaukee City Parks to fabricate the final designs through the skilled carpenters and welders of the Department of Public Works (DPW), turning student work into city-built park infrastructure that can be deployed across neighborhoods, while leveraging an existing partnership between DPW Forestry and Kettle Moraine Hardwoods to provide urban wood.

“Custom solutions designed to be fabricated by DPW skilled tradespeople, from materials sourced by DPW arborists, and installed by DPW laborers can be less expensive, more functional, and more durable than off-the-shelf options,” Milwaukee City Parks Manager Joseph Kaltenberg said. “They also keep our dollars here in Milwaukee, supporting local families with good jobs and fair wages.”

The collaboration reflects CDS’s ongoing commitment to community-oriented design and sustainable construction practices. It also strengthens connections between 51���� students, faculty, and municipal partners while giving emerging designers real-world experience creating solutions for public spaces.

“When designing our schemes as a team, our experiences, collaboration, and roundtable discussions challenged us to think critically about design possibilities and begin thinking outside of the box,” Master of Architecture student Ryan Hernandez said.

“Working alongside faculty and city partners showed us firsthand how design decisions translate beyond the classroom.”

Story by Oliver J. Johnson

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