737336 Sustainable cities, urban metabolism, and climate change

Type
Lecture and exercise
Semester hours
4
Lecturer (assistant)
Kaufmann, Lisa , Stadlmayr, Barbara , Mayer, Andreas , Eisenmenger, Nina , Lemke, Stefanie
Organisation
Offered in
Sommersemester 2025
Languages of instruction
Englisch
Content

tba
Objective (expected results of study and acquired competences)

After completion of the course students have gained interdisciplinary knowledge of the metabolism of cities and of urban sustainability challenges and solutions. They have deepened their knowledge on how urban environments are affected by climate change and the role of urban agglomerations as leverage points for reducing resource use and emissions in different geographic, socio-cultural and socio-economic contexts. They are familiar with the concept of urban metabolism and how it can be applied in analyzing urban sustainability issues as well as city-hinterland relations. Based on micro-research projects in interdisciplinary teams investigating a specific urban case students improve their knowledge on selected topics of urban sustainability, and they gain a critical understanding of climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. Topics to be investigated can include, for example, the urban energy system, the urban food system, infrastructures and the built environment; urban resource flows and urban mining, city-hinterland relations and urban environmental footprints, circular and bioeconomy challenges at the urban scale; urban heat islands; urban policies at different scales (e.g. smart city strategies; C40 cities initiative); land use conflicts, urban actors and power dynamics; inequality.

Students develop skills in analyzing urban systems from different disciplinary perspectives; they improve their skills in applying concepts and methods from their specialization to questions of climate change and sustainability in an urban context.

In a micro-project they get familiar with data and sources for investigating urban systems, they gain skills and competences in collecting, processing and integrating data and information from different sources; they improve their competencies in applying quantitative and qualitative methods and models from their specialization in an urban context, in analyzing policy documents and in transdisciplinary methods and dialogue with urban stakeholders.

Through working in interdisciplinary teams in micro research projects, students develop competencies in inter- and transdisciplinary science and communication, they are able to develop research questions, and gain competences in the presentation of findings including fact-based argumentation in group discussions. They acquire problem-solving skills (e.g. data gap closure, design skills, innovative information gathering across a wide array of information types).
You can find more details like the schedule or information about exams on the course-page in BOKUonline.