Learning and Teaching Interdisciplinary Skills in Sustainable Urban Development—The Case of Tampere University, Finland

Abstract

Developing the economic, environmental, and social sustainability of urban environments is challenging due to the complex and interconnected nature of the context and objectives. In order to be successful in this challenging environment, professionals working in the urban development arena should have a holistic understanding of the different pillars of sustainable development, as well as various competencies and skills. This paper looks at sustainable urban development (SUD) from the perspective of the skills and competencies required and identifies effective pedagogic practices that could help educate future professionals. In particular, we explore interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary learning, reflective thinking, and experiential learning, which are needed for understanding various aspects of a complex phenomenon, collaborating with professionals from different fields and coming up with novel and constructive ways of solving complex problems. We first examine these through reviewing and analyzing relevant literature on education for sustainable development, with a focus on SUD. Then, we explore the application of these approaches in practice by describing and analyzing a newly introduced degree program at Tampere University, Finland.

Skatescape in the Making: Developing Sustainable Urban Pedagogies through Transdisciplinary Education

“…The transdisciplinary development described in the paper is based on the authors' long-term acquaintance with co-creational research, particularly in urban studies contexts, including collaboration with various professionals, policy makers, private actors, NGOs, grassroots actors, and other citizens involved in city-regional planning and development [5,[35][36][37][38][39]. Polk [40] describes aptly the basic idea of transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge where real-life problem solving is targeted concurrently with scientific aims:…”

“…Education for sustainable urban development is an emerging global trend in higher education [1][2][3][4][5], along with parallel developments in urban governance [6,7] and environmental pedagogy at all educational levels [8,9]. A common aim in these initiatives is to move towards a more sustainable world by transforming cities and activating urban citizens as key drivers of change.…”

Resilience and Economic Intelligence Through Digitalization and Big Data Analytics

“…Frequently, it is hard for urban planners to identify and prioritise the desired governance goals and outcomes for their cities due to the high complexity of the urban socio-ecological systems and interconnected nature of the context and objectives. A holistic understanding of the different pillars of sustainable development and various competencies and skills are needed (Taylor et al, 2021). Besides, as social certification and compliance with the decision are critical components for effective governance, the priorities have to be based on value-focus thinking of an entire range of stakeholders using a multi-criteria decision analysis (Reichert et al, 2015).…”

“…They depend on the particular social, environmental and political context and, among others, may include: resource mobilization, financial mechanisms, trained actors (including managers and decision-makers), data mobilization and access to data, knowledge management, improved knowledge (facts, predictions, scenarios) and capacity to process and utilize the existing data and knowledge, technical and scientific cooperation, technology transfer, contextualization, communication, awarenessraising, social certification of decisions (CBD/WG 2020, Reichert et al, 2015). All of these raise practical challenges for universities and their curricula that have to address the skills and competencies needed for professionals in the field of sustainable urban planning and to identify effective pedagogic practices that could help educate future professionals (Taylor et al, 2021). They call for long-life training programmes and deeper cooperation across disciplines.…”

“…Equally, those from the field of economic and political sciences are directly involved in solving issues related to economic valuation of ecosystem services, cost-benefit analyses, planning and accountability for sustainable development of resilient cities (see Figure 2). Integrating sustainability in higher education programmes, and collaboration of professionals from different fields based on holistic, integrated approach are needed for understanding various aspects of interactions and functioning of coupled nature-social urban systems, simulating co-production of sustainability knowledge and finding novel and constructive ways of solving complex problems (Balsiger, 2015, Taylor et al, 2021.…”