Education for a New Sustainable Urban Systems Science: Designing a New Curriculum Integrating Sustainability Science and Urban Science

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Although urban areas are engines of innovation and wealth creation, they face a variety of complex and intertwined challenges. The challenges include aging and inadequate infrastructure; health risks from pollution, poor diets, and sedentary lifestyles; vulnerability to natural disasters and extreme weather events; and inequities in economic opportunities. Currently, it is widely recognized that the challenges posed by achieving sustainable socioeconomic development and those posed by the ongoing process of global urbanization are, in effect, the same. To develop in a sustainable manner, reduce poverty and share prosperity globally, solutions will need to be implemented where most humans now live, mainly in cities. This recognition points to the development of a new "sustainable urban systems science" to address fundamental research questions that need to be answered to harness the transformative potential of urban areas to benefit society at local, national, and global scales. This new "sustainable urban systems science" requires a corresponding curriculum to educate its scientists. In response, this project will gather leaders in the field at a three-day conference to design a new curriculum in sustainable urban systems science. The "next generation science" for studying sustainable urban systems should be multidisciplinary in approach and develop new methods and models. This new science will integrate insights generated by sustainability science and the newly emerging field of urban science. It will also produce new understandings about how the present scale and pace of worldwide urbanization can proceed without negative effects on the planet's social and physical environments. Importantly, it also calls for the development of a new approach for training the next generation of urban sustainability scientists who will develop, advance, refine and communicate the new science of urban sustainability. The proposed three-day conference, to be convened by Arizona State University's School of Sustainability Science, will gather leading sustainability and urban science scholars. The goal of the conference is to build a curriculum for a new PhD program in sustainable urban systems science. The conference will have an international perspective and will involve individuals representing key stakeholders. The proposed curriculum will be a template, which academic institutions worldwide can modify, localize, and implement as part of an international effort to develop the educational infrastructure needed to undergird a global research effort in advancing sustainable urban systems. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.