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Sustainability is a result of the interplay between technology, policy and people’s daily lives. Understanding this interplay is essential for creating sustainable cities. Learn how citizen’s co-creation is key in making cities worldwide more sustainable in this open and online course.
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Around the world, major challenges of our time such as population growth and climate change are being addressed in cities. Here, citizens play an important role amidst governments, companies, NGOs and researchers in creating social, technological and political innovations for achieving sustainability.
Citizens can be co-creators of sustainable cities when they engage in city politics or in the design of the urban environment and its technologies and infrastructure. In addition, citizens influence and are influenced by the technologies and systems that they use every day. Sustainability is thus a result of the interplay between technology, policy and people’s daily lives. Understanding this interplay is essential for creating sustainable cities. In this MOOC, we zoom in on Amsterdam, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City, Nairobi, Kampala and Suzhou as living labs for exploring the dynamics of co-creation for sustainable cities worldwide. We will address topics such as participative democracy and legitimacy, ICTs and big data, infrastructure and technology, and SMART technologies in daily life.
This global scope will be used to illustrate why specific forms of co-creation are preferred in specific urban contexts. Moreover, we will investigate and compare these cities on three themes that have a vast effect on city life:
This MOOC will teach you about the dynamics of co-creation and the key principles of citizens interacting with service providing companies, technology and infrastructure developers, policy makers and researchers. You will gain an understanding of major types of co-creation and their interdependency with their socio-technical and political contexts. You will become equipped to indicate how you can use co-creation to develop innovative technologies, policy arrangements or social practices for a sustainable city in your own community. You will demonstrate this by developing an action plan, research proposal or project idea.
This course forms a part of two educational programme of the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) - AMS Vital and Circular city research themes. It is developed by Wageningen UR and TU Delft, two of the founding universities of AMS Institute, and in cooperation with Tsinghua University.
For whom?
Basic knowledge of sustainability in urban settings, urban environmental technology and urban management is assumed.
The prerequisites are a bachelors/ undergraduate level on:
Module 1: Background Knowlegde for Co-Creating Sustainable Cities
Module 2: Water & Water Waste: Water as a Basic Need
Module 3: Energy and Air 1: Living with the Haze
Module 4: Energy & Air 2: Citizens Co-Creating Cleaner Air
Module 5: Urban Food & Green: The Use of Urban Spaces
Module 6: Energy & Air 3: Creating Smart Energy & Mobility
Module 7: Urban Water: Dry Feet for Citizens
Module 8: Synthesus: The Dynamics of Co-Creation
''All the videos were excellent and I especially liked the topics looking at various municipalities around the world to reiterate the idea there are no silver bullet solutions.''
''The comparison with different cities was very nice and helped us understand the different city management and co-creation which exist in the world!''
''What I liked very much is the alternation between the theory and the examples of participation in execution.''
Do you have questions about the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and/or related online programmes of Wageningen University & Research? To help you find answers to your questions, we created a list with frequently asked questions about enrolling, participating in- and finishing a MOOC.
