About the Project:

Principal Coordinator: Helen Sooväli-Sepping, Professor of Environmental Management, School of Natural Sciences and Health.

Sustainable Cities in the Nordic-Baltic Region is a new innovative multidisciplinary 5 ECTS masters and doctoral level course that brings together master and doctoral students together with postdocs, academic professionals and local experts and stakeholders from the Nordic – Baltic cities. The purpose of the course is to engage students in real life urban challenges and problem solving processes.

During 4 days ca 25 Nordic-Baltic master students, divided into multidisciplinary teams, face a real-life case for which they create sustainable solutions to meet the variable demands of Nordic-Baltic urban settings, and take part in inspiring lectures. These master students are accompanied and supervised by 5 doctoral students from different Nordic and Baltic universities.

The course provides doctoral students with pedagogical experience and professional networks in research on urban planning and sustainability. The course builds on multidisciplinary academic discussions and theoretical approaches, which draw on fields such as architecture, environmental sciences, spatial planning, human geography, and social  sciences. The course will highlight the social-ecological approach of urban planning, which seeks to more closely integrate social and environmental considerations. The social-ecological approach emphasizes that people, communities, economies, societies, cultures are embedded parts of the biosphere and shape it, from local to global scales. At the same time people, communities, economies, societies, cultures are shaped by, dependent on, and evolving with the biosphere. Improving the mainstreaming of the social-ecological approach to sustainability is one of the aims of the project.

The project is a collaboration between the University of Helsinki, Aalto University, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the University of Latvia and Tallinn University.

It is funded by the NORDPLUS programme.


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Last updated 11/06/2023 - 11:33