Vivek Shandas

Founder/Director, Portland State University Sustaining Urban Places Research Lab

Professor Vivek Shandas specializes in developing strategies for addressing the implications of climate change on cities. His teaching and research examine the intersection of exposure to climate-induced events, governance processes, and planning mechanisms. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Shandas studies the emergent characteristics that generate vulnerability among communities and infrastructure. Theoretically, he views cities as grand experiments that are socially constructed, and can vary in their capacities to adapt to changing social and ecological conditions. Empirically, Dr. Shandas examines the human and planetary forces that facilitate (or inhibit) collective response. As such the broad aims of his teaching and research are to identify threats to planetary habitation, and shape landscapes to improve urban environmental quality. He teaches courses in environmental planning, participatory geographic information systems (GIS), and climate adaptation.

As the Founder and Director of the Sustaining Urban Places Research (SUPR), he brings a policy-relevant approach to research, including the evaluation of environmental stressors on human health, development of indicators and tools to improve decision-making, and the construction of frameworks to guide the growth of urban regions. Over the past several years, research from the SUPR Lab has appeared in the Smithsonian Magazine, National Public Radio, Washington Post, Minnesota Public Broadcasting, NY Times, Qatar Times, and several other national and international media.