Sustainable Cities
Sustainability issues facing society, our city and our university are often persistent problems that require a multi- and transdisciplinary approach. Hence the importance of a Stadsacademie in which co-creative knowledge production is taken seriously.
This course is embedded in this Stadsacademie, a transdisciplinary setting where research, education and services for society merge. It is a place where Ghent policymakers, civil society groups, citizen cooperatives, businesses, and of course lecturers and students from Ghent University come together to think about problem definitions, solutions, strategies, experiments, upscaling, etc., and translate these into assignments for student projects, master's theses, doctoral research, etc.
In this course, we want to teach students to approach one or more Ghent sustainability issues from multiple perspectives and using multiple techniques. It should become clear to students that complex urban sustainability issues can be framed and approached in different ways, which means that both the description of the problem and the choice of solution pathways can differ.
In particular, an urban framing of sustainability issues will be developed. Urbanity is seen as a model that starts from increased interdependencies of citizens and the translation of that interdependence into specific urban organisational forms. Such framing brings together a relational and socio-technical perspective on the sustainability issue with a social justice perspective and a direct involvement in the socio-spatial context in which a problem arises.
Prof Thomas Block is the lecturer-in-charge and Prof Michiel Dehaene (Department of Architecture and Urban Design) is co-lecturer.
This course (Duurzame steden – E084581) is taught in Dutch.