Basic Techniques for Sustainable Urban Design

In a series of interactive lectures and workshops, present and future urban tasks will be presented and discussed, and urban design principles for sustainable urban plans will be practiced. Innovative realized plans will be introduced as examples. Sustainable urbanism themes such as climate change, the water challenge, heat stress, biodiversity, ecology, urban agriculture, air quality, energy, mobility, urban transport, waste and material flows, social and economic value, and process will be discussed. By field trips future proof sustainable plans will be illustrated. The edX MOOC Sustainable Urban Development will provide basic knowledge on global challenges and sustainable urbanism themes.

In the urbanism professions, visualizations play an important role. They serve to communicate research results and planning proposals. But they are also used to develop ideas, in brainstorming and design.

In this course, the use of visual means at each stage of the research and design process will be discussed. Students will work on visualisation assignments, such as: sketching to develop and share our ideas; mapping to understand the conditions, the history and to orient ourselves; and info graphs to explain an idea or to present statistics.