Legacy Charter School is slated to move from Greenville’s walkable Berea Mill District to a parcel fronting White Horse Road—an auto-oriented, six-lane arterial with one of South Carolina’s highest pedestrian-injury rates and summer surface temperatures 4–6 °C above surrounding neighborhoods. Before the first classroom is relocated, this study interrogates how the corridor’s spatial, climatic, and experiential qualities are likely to shape pupils’ future mobility and health. It asks: How do the micro-climatic, geometric, and perceptual characteristics of the road influence adolescents’ sense of safety and willingness to walk or cycle, and how can architectural analysis articulate design pathways toward healthier post-relocation travel?

Grounded in research linking street form, thermal comfort, and children’s independent mobility, the Health Equity + Environmental Design Lab will use a mixed methodology that centers user experience in public space. Spatial diagnosis will present the spatial status of the school campus after relocation to identify environmental problems, and participatory visual ethnography will show students' daily travel habits before relocation to understand their actual needs. Combining the two allows for a more comprehensive analysis of the pre-relocation school environment on White Horse Road from the perspective of adolescents, thus enabling more thorough preparation for the school relocation.

The stakes are twofold. Locally, the project will produce a “Vulnerability and Opportunity Atlas” and a suite of concept-level interventions—arcade extensions, shade groves, median refuges—ready for discussion with Bike Walk Greenville, LiveWell Greenville, and Furman University’s Shi Institute. Disciplinarily, the paper demonstrates how user-centered, climate-responsive diagramming can translate public-health metrics into architectural propositions transferable to Sun-Belt corridors facing similar heat-and-traffic synergies. By foregrounding adolescent perspectives and embedding them within rigorous environmental analytics, the study positions architects as vital mediators between global challenges of warming and inequitable access and the local design of streets that sustain daily health and well-being.

Interstitial spaces, such as narrow gaps, leftover parcels, and micro-corridors, matter within the urban milieu. While Western cities increasingly experiment with pocket parks, laneway activations, and adaptive reuse, these interventions typically occur as exceptions within planning systems shaped by zoning setbacks, risk-averse regulation, and historical preference for defined, programmatic space. As a result, many spatial margins still emerge as byproducts of infrastructure rather than intentional sites of social or atmospheric value. Tokyo offers a compelling counterpoint: its urban environment demonstrates how cultural logics of compactness, coexistence, and attentiveness can transform interstitial spaces into distinctive, functional, and sensorially rich micro-places embedded within everyday urban life. This paper analyzes Tokyo’s interstitial spaces through four typological lenses, namely compressed architecture, whispering alleyways, the city of signs, and sacred leftovers, then critically compares with selected Western precedents. Rather than presenting Tokyo as an idealized opposite, the study situates both contexts within broader planning histories to reveal how diverse cultural frameworks interpret constraint, visibility, and public presence. Guided by the theories from Tanizaki, Böhme, Imai, and Williams, this study investigates how Tokyo’s built environment is shaped by principles of blurred spatial boundaries, atmospheric depth, and layered coexistence. The authors consider how light and shadow are not only used for illumination, but also contribute meaningfully to atmosphere, guidance, and rhythm. Furthermore, consideration is extended to how it reflects and expresses broader themes of safety, identity, and sensory experience. The methodology integrates site-based observations in Tokyo, case studies, spatial analysis, photography, critical literature review, and logical argumentation. The paper argues that Tokyo’s treatment of interstitial space offers transferable lessons for designers seeking to elevate residual urban areas beyond service functions. The proposed framework provides planners and architects with practical criteria for identifying, evaluating, and activating interstitial sites as contributors to social connection, urban vibrancy, and atmospheric depth.

The rise of the internet, cloud storage systems, cryptocurrencies, and artificial intelligence has created a growing demand for larger computing infrastructures among companies and organizations, housed in specialized buildings known as Data Centers (DCs). These DCs vary in size and require substantial amounts of power and water to support the numerous servers they contain. Increasing concerns have emerged regarding the energy consumption, water usage, and pollution associated with DCs. These impacts include increased energy bills, heightened noise levels from backup generators, and exposure to air pollution caused by electricity generation. With the demand for DCs projected to increase by 160% by 2030, further research into their impact on our lives is crucial.

The environmental impacts of DCs are documented in various articles, websites, and mainstream media, with some addressing global and general social, economic, and health impacts on local communities. However, few studies examine how DCs integrate into local contexts or affect the immediate community. Additionally, no architectural or urban design studies on this topic have been found, except for one or two theses written abroad.

While this is a global issue, this comparative study evaluated several DCs in three distinct areas of Atlanta and their connections to the surrounding communities to assess their impact on human experience. It examined various factors, including the DCs’ contextual characteristics (e.g., general experiential character of the context, zoning, and density), site design (e.g., layout, size, setbacks, impervious surfaces/ecology, backup generator location), and building characteristics (size, massing, energy source, façade porosity, etc.). The results of this study are expected to contribute to a better understanding of the DCs’ impact on local contexts and immediate communities, whether they constitute an architectural typology or merely an engineering solution, and how DCs should be integrated into urban environments—if they should be integrated at all.