Professor Jeff Hou has taught in the department since 2001 where he served as the Graduate Program Coordinator, prior to becoming the Department Chair in 2009. Prof. Hou’s research, teaching, and practice focus on community design, design activism, cross-cultural learning, and engagement of marginalized communities in planning, design, and placemaking. In a career that spans across the Pacific, Hou has worked with indigenous tribes, farmers, and fishers in Taiwan, neighborhood residents in Japan, villagers in China, and inner-city immigrant youths and elders in North American cities, in projects ranging from conservation of wildlife habitats to rebuilding of indigenous villages and design of urban open space. He has written extensively on the agency of citizens and communities in shaping the built environments, with edited books that include Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (2010), Transcultural Cities: Border-Crossing and Placemaking (2013), and Now Urbanism: the Future City is Here (2015). He is also a co-author of Greening Cities, Growing Communities: Learning from Urban Community Gardens in Seattle (2009) (with Julie Johnson and Laura Lawson). Hou has contributed chapters to numerous books, including The Informal American City: Beyond Taco Trucks and Day Labor (2014), Beyond Zuccotti Park: Freedom of Assembly and the Occupation of Public Space (2012), The Emergent Asian City: Concomitant Urbanities and Urbanisms (2012), Companion to Urban Design (2011), and Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism (2008). His research on innovative practices of community engagement and design education has also been published in Journal of Planning Education and Research, Landscape Journal, Journal of Architectural Education, and Open House International.