MOOC — Livable Future Cities START: 23.September 2015 —
About the course:
“Livable Future Cities” is the second Massive Urban Online Course in a series of MOOCS under the title “Future Cities”. The series aims to bring the latest research results on planning, managing and transforming cities to those places in the world where this knowledge has the highest benefit for its citizens. Whereas “Future Cities I” provided an overview, “Livable Future Cities” focuses on livability in existing and new cities.
With the city developing into the predominant living and working environment of humanity, livability or quality of life in the city becomes crucial. We present the urban system as the most complex human-made organism with a metabolism that we model in terms of stocks and flows: flows are entities that change over time, such as building material as it enters the city, water as it streams into the city for use, or finances as they flow into an urban development area; stocks are entities that have a relatively stable condition over a period of time: houses made of building material, urban bodies of water such as lakes, or finances in a bank account; of course, all these stocks can change into flows again: building materials used for recycling, treated water leaving the city, or finances flowing into the next investment.
The dynamic development of cities includes many more of these stocks and flows, but all of them have a direct impact on livability. For a start, the course will focus on 4 areas that directly affect livability in a city: urban energy, urban climate, urban ecology and urban mobility. Urban energy covers the production, distribution and use of energy in the city; urban climate describes interdependencies between location, urban energy, urban morphology and the heat island effect; urban ecology explains the role of ecosystem services; and urban mobility links public and private transportation to the above.
The course begins by presenting measurable criteria for the assessment of livability, and how to positively influence the design of cities towards more livability. “Livable Future Cities” focuses on this basic topic of the human habitat in a holistic way. “Livable Future Cities” also introduces possibilities of participatory urban design by citizens, leading towards the development of a citizen design science.
You will be able to share your experiences with the other participants in the course and also with the experts in the teaching team. With the successful completion of the course, including a certificate, the participant will be able to better understand how to make a city more livable by going beyond the physical appearance and by focusing on different properties and impact factors of the urban system.
Welcome to Livable Future Cities!