AIA Japan - Oil and Water: Climate Urbanism in Houston, Texas with Dr. Nataya Friedan

When: Thursday 12 February 2026 @ 04:30 (Eastern US Time)/ 18:30 (Tokyo time)
Where: ONLINE/ In-Person: Lutron Asuka Co., 1 Chome−1−1 Shin-Aoyama Bldg. West 14F, Minamiaoyama, 東京都 107-0062 Japan

CES Credits: Estimated 1 LU/HSW for AIA members

Description

As climate change disasters worsen across the globe, it is clear that evidence does not necessarily lead to action. Instead, misinformation, conspiracy, and outright lies have created new forms of climate denial and mistrust in science, especially in the United States. This lecture uses ethnography to bring the climate conversation out of the abstract and down to the concrete of Houston, Texas. In the fall of 2019, Houston experienced the fifth 500-year flood in five years by the federal risk designations at the time. Despite scientific consensus and data specific to the Gulf Coast, many leaders in local government as well as the business community were calling the storms “just another wet cycle.” Drawing on eighteen months of fieldwork beginning in 2018, this lecture follows civil servants, activists, politicians, and businesspeople as they grappled with climate change evidence in an oil industry town. In the day-to-day process of planning flood infrastructure, climate denial was a refusal to look backward as much as forward.

This lecture argues that the consequential falsehood determining action in Houston was not “climate change isn’t real” but “fuel is cheap.” This claim, whether in Houston or elsewhere, requires persistent denial of past liabilities as much as future climate impacts. This lecture looks at how these assumptions at the individual and political level play out on the ground and in Houston’s urban form.