Wurster Hall is home to three campuswide centers that provide research facilities and support to faculty and graduate students from the College of Environmental Design and other departments and programs at UC Berkeley.

Center for Environmental Design Research (CEDR)

CEDR’s mission is to foster research in environmental planning and design, ranging from the local environments of people within buildings to region-wide ecosystems, from small details of building construction to large-scale urban planning, from the history of the built environment to the design process itself. CEDR manages and edits Places, the main journal in the U.S. principally focused on urban design.

Within CEDR are the following research centers: 

Center for the Built Environment (CBE). CBE is a National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center whose goal is to provide timely, unbiased information on new building technologies and design techniques. CBE research is supported and guided by CBE industry partners, a consortium of building industry leaders committed to improving the design, operation, and performance of commercial and institutional buildings.

The International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE). IASTE is concerned with the comparative and cross-cultural understanding of traditional habitat as an expression of informal cultural conventions. IASTE’s purpose is to serve as an umbrella association for all scholars studying vernacular, indigenous, popular, and traditional environments. Activities are centered around its biennial conferences, and the publication of Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review and the Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Working Paper Series. The conferences, attracting audiences of over 300 participants, are held in different locations worldwide.

Center for New Media (CNM). The goals of the CNM are to understand the full philosophical, aesthetic, practical, and historical significance of the information-age transformations in which we are now immersed, and to position UC Berkeley so it can inform and help direct the design of future media. Current core research themes are electronic games, surveillance, and Ubiquitous Computing.

Green Buildings Research Center. The Green Buildings Research Center is a permanent campus institution dedicated to research and teaching about sustainable design and to improving the sustainability of buildings on campus. Because Berkeley has by far the largest building research establishment in the UC system, this center could grow to involve other campuses systemwide.

Institute of Urban and Regional Development (IURD)

IURD’s goal is to help scholars and students understand the dynamics of communities, cities, and regions while informing public policy at local, state, and national levels. IURD is home to several centers and research initiatives:

• The Community Partnerships Office, providing policy research on urban issues including neighborhood and economic development, environmental protection, community empowerment, and social change.
   
  
• The Center for Cities and Schools, committed to bridging education and urban policy and advocates high-quality education as a critical component of broader city and metropolitan policymaking.
   
  
• The Center for Community Innovation, which works on issues of interest to community clients: revitalizing neighborhoods, developing economic resilience, designing and programming for the public realm, and producing and preserving affordable housing.
   
  
• The Center for Global Metropolitan Studies, which coordinates research and instruction among faculty from many departments and schools to support the undergraduate urban and metropolitan studies major and two interdisciplinary graduate teaching groups in Comparative Metropolitan Studies, and Infrastructure & the Environment.
   
  
• The California Strategic Planning Initiative, bringing Berkeley’s intellectual leadership to policymakers and other stakeholders to restore a prosperous, competitive, and inclusive California.
   
  
• The New Ruralism Initiative, bridging sustainable agriculture and new urbanism. It embraces the power of place-making that can help American agriculture move from an artificially narrow production focus to encompass broader resource preservation values. As a place-based and systems-based framework, it nurtures the symbiotic relationship between urban and rural areas.
   
  
• The Shrinking Cities Group, which comprises academics and planning professionals across four continents, addresses the global phenomena of cities experiencing dramatic decline in their economic and social bases.
   
  
• The Disability Studies Group, which examines disabilities in various contexts such as culture, history, learning, product design, aging, parenting, sexuality, and performance art.
   
  

Geographic Information Science Center (GISC)

GISC's fundamental mission is to raise the level of GIS expertise on the UC Berkeley campus and to stimulate cross- disciplinary education, research, and cooperation using these technologies. In turn, the center seeks to raise the visibility of existing activity, to encourage linkages and to stimulate new research and education at Berkeley in the rapidly developing field of geographic information science. It accomplishes this mission by serving research, education, and administration with computer infrastructure support; shared hardware resources; distribution of site licensed software; specialized instructional classes and seminars; data development, repository and access; consulting services; programming support; community building; and outreach.