Webinar with AIA Japan: Utilizing Urban Rivers with Takako Tajima

This webinar is hosted by Yumiko Yamada, AIA, incoming 2024 President of AIA Japan (AIAJ).

Throughout history, human settlements relied on rivers as sources of water and food, means of circulation and transportation, and places of recreation. The history of urbanization, however, is also the history of degraded riparian systems.

This lecture will examine the plight of rivers in the 20th and 21st centuries and the prospects for urbanism when we reorient our cities to the rivers from which they emerged.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify the differences between perennial rivers and intermittent rivers.
2. Describe the United States Army Corps of Engineers’ role and jurisdiction relative to rivers.
3. Define the purpose of the Clean Water Act.
4. Identify examples of point source and non-point source pollution.
5. Explain how the “watershed approach” differs from past approaches to environmental management.

Speaker: Takako Tajima, AIA NCARB ASLA

Takako Tajima is principal of Tajima Open Design Office and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Southern California. Like her background, Takako’s professional experience ranges in type, scale, and scope. Currently, she is contributing to a set of new objective design standards for the City of Palm Desert and designing the open space components of several housing projects being developed as part of California Department of Housing and Community Development’s Homekey initiative. At USC, Takako leads graduate level design studios and teaches in the Asian Architecture and Landscape Urbanism study abroad program for undergraduate architecture students.