ES/SO 360 - Designing the Sustainable City

“All the biggest problems that we face now (…) like global climate change or the pandemic, require collaborative efforts, not just the multiplication of the same sort of person a million times over.” - Peter Galison,  founder of The Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, in “Stranger than anything dreamed up by sci-fi: will we ever understand black holes?” The Guardian, 26 May, 2021

Cities are not only the engine of economic growth and where most of the world’s population now lives, they also use 78% of the world’s resources and produce more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. Increased urbanization, in line with other global transformations such as climate change and migration, requires innovative urban development that takes ecological, social and economic factors into account. Cities are increasingly expanding on agricultural land and valuable ecosystems, and have become more vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters. Experience has shown that when cities are considered as “linked social-ecological-technological systems”, initiatives are more successful since they foster collaboration across temporal, social and ecological scales as well as intersectoral and integrated resource management.

This course aims at fostering a cross-institutional and multidisciplinary learning environment, by connecting students from the three IES Abroad centers in Nice, Berlin and Barcelona. Fellow students will not only benefit from the expertise of faculties from a variety of academic backgrounds, but also learn about sustainability challenges and policies in different cities around the world. Through problem-based learning, students will be able to apply global norms such as the SDGs and assessment tools to local urban challenges. Students will be asked to identify the most pressing sustainability challenges in their host city and observe how it relates to other realities. Working in small teams, they will develop an innovative project proposal that can offer solutions to the identified challenge, taking into account the environmental, economic, historical and social characteristics of their host city. With the students from the other centers, they will be part of a greater learning community, guided by faculty experts from diverse backgrounds, working to address these challenges.

Substantive field visits and connections with local stakeholders, such as grassroots initiatives, start-ups or public institutions, will allow students to gather valuable data and information as they develop their projects; innovative technology will enable them to share their experience and findings across the different locations; and problem-based learning will culminate in each team delivering a multimedia presentation to the group. Upon successful completion of this course, students will earn a micro- credential in Sustainability and project development that will demonstrate their sustainability literacy and ability to find innovative solutions to complex problems.