Urban Complexity

Urban Complexity

Course Introduction

Cities are witnessing a concentration of the biggest challenges but may also offer the most likely solutions for the multiple problems for human life on this planet. With over half of the world population living in urban areas, rising to 70% in 2050, it is increasingly important to analyse how cities can contribute to the more social, environmental, and economic sustainability of the city and beyond. This course looks at the analytical comprehension of where urban wicked problems stem from, how they evolved and how they influence the resilience and sustainability of urban areas and citizens. The course recognizes, defines, and describes these complex systems that constitute cities and the multidisciplinary processes, which are self-organized, non-linear, and non-deterministic, that happens within and between them.

Objectives

This course discusses challenges related to sustainable urban development from a complexity perspective. By the end of the course, participants will be able to apply a complexity perspective to analyse how cities across the world in highly diverse contexts produce a wide range of wicked problems related to sustainability and resilience. 

Course content

The course is offered in three parts, which are closely interwoven:

Complex City: This part conceptualizes the evolution of cities from the perspective of complexity, showing how wicked problems related to sustainability and resilience emerge and endure. It forms the theoretical foundation for the course, comprising lectures, workshops, discussions, and self-study. Participants thus gain knowledge on the main concepts of the course (complexity, sustainability, resilience), their trends and application in diverse urban contexts, and their interlinkages.

Gaining Land Use Transactions (GLUT): GLUT is an intensive pedagogical game that applies a complexity perspective to dynamic urban land markets. The game illustrates how land markets and stakeholder decisions shape cities over time and how that affects urban sustainability.

Individual deepening: From the onset of the course, participants choose a particular wicked problem in a city that they would like to describe and analyse based on theory and the GLUT game. This enables participants to bring in their own interests, knowledge, and focus. It culminates in an individual paper on a wicked sustainability or resilience problem in a city and an infographic.