This week will offer an introduction to basic concepts of urban sustainability and key course points.
Various sustainability rating systems will be reviewed, with respect to the capacity of metrics to leverage environmental change and indicate quality-of-life benefits.
This week focuses on scientific and legal efforts to expand urban sustainability, as well as their impacts on human health, social and environmental justice, and both the management and stewardship of natural resources.
This week will emphasize the everyday world of urban sustainability, including tracing municipal services, urban parks and planning, as well as efforts to make cities more walkable.
We will also explore links between sustainability and human happiness.
We will look at the big picture to examine big corporations, development projects, and systems that can leverage climate change mitigation and adaptation, fair trade, food security, green finance – all at a planetary scale.
The UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) will be reviewed along with international conservation and rapid urban development. We will analyze how our smart phones and computers are source of global information, and a physical trace of global resources and manufacturing.
This week, we will explore individual people’s strategies and capacities for addressing urban sustainability through consumption patterns, eating habits, health choices, energy usage, bicycling, recycling, and the new sharing economy.
The final week will focus on summarizing the course and completing all projects.