Minimizing the environmental impact of urban settings in an integrated manner is the key goal of our Design Chair.  Guelph’s entire community is acting as our living, dynamic design lab to provide the setting for advancing environmental design engineering education and capabilities.  Advancing design education will be achieved through bringing the real, practical environmental challenges of the community into our classrooms and into the minds of our students.  Advancing design capabilities will be achieved through developing and demonstrating tools to reduce the environmental impact of urban communities in an integrated manner. An Urban Systems Environmental Design (USED) Centre has been created to facilitate bringing people together to achieve our design goals.