MOOCs

This MOOC seeks to create awareness on natural restoration, enabling the recovery of natural areas and enhancing resilience against climate change-related disasters on a neighborhood scale. Through experiential learning, participants will be invited to explore and design solutions that can contribute to the conservation and restoration of the ecological balance in our cities.

Structured around three different spatial scales: city scale, neighbourhood scale, and household scale, this MOOC addresses the interconnected issues of corruption, integrity failures, lack of accountability, and poor access to water and sanitation services in informal settlements in Lima. The participants of this MOOC will hear directly from policy makers, civil society organizations, residents of informal settlements and staff of the utility company to expand their understanding of the impacts of corruption and lack of integrity in the water and sanitation sectors, learn how to address such challenges, and how such impacts can be spatialized in informal settlements.

Bridging international colorful expertise, disciplines, and languages, this MOOC focuses on ways of sensing, reading, and communicating about the diverse sociocultural and ecological environments that give urban spaces their flavors, and to elevate sensibility against human-made hazards, erasures, and dispossession. Basing on feminist principles of research and data visualization, participants of this MOOC will be trained with a diverse toolkit that triangulates sensorial experiences, participatory (critical) mapping, and visual methods, to help situate divergent perspectives and enhance concepts of living and coexistence in urban spaces.

This MOOC shows several of the great cultural and natural heritage sites in Kazakhstan and zooms in on the city of Almaty. At the same time, it addresses the challenges in protecting these resources, and through discussions and interviews with scholars, practitioners, activists, and local authorities, tries to find common pathways to strengthen the protection of the cultural and natural capital of Kazakhstan.

This MOOC addresses the lack of multidisciplinary and multi-sectoral flood risk reduction and management practices and policies in urban settings of Tanzania. Using interdisciplinary spatial research methods, this MOOC will explore a century of flood disasters and responses in the case study city of Dar es Salaam, in order to influence change in practice and policy in risk reduction and flood management.

This MOOC addresses the gap in sharing existing experiences and practices on Built Environment Education (BEE) for children and youth on a global scale. By visiting several examples from practice from various parts of the world, participants of this MOOC will get an insight in the multifaceted nature of existing approaches, methodologies, and fields of implementation. This MOOC also serves as a networking step between the scattered BEE educators and intends to bring BEE into the curricula of future teachers, architects, and planners.

This MOOC addresses ‘urban ecological heritagescapes’ as a theoretical traction to foster sustainable urbanization. Participants of this MOOC will engage with theories on natural-cultural heritage, grasp interdisciplinary methodological frameworks such as environmental history and political ecology, and learn about the recent initiatives of international and national agencies in this direction. Snippets from the field and voices of multiple actors from the wetlands of Kolkata and lakes of Bengaluru will empirically inform theoretical insights.

This MOOC addresses the lack of integration of natural and cultural diversity in the instruments of territorial planning in Colombia. By zooming in on a successful pilot case in Quibdó, participants of this MOOC will gain a better understanding of what a socio-environmental and intercultural methodological design for influencing public policies for land use planning could look like in practice. Through voices from multiple actors from the field, they will also learn first-hand about the challenges and possibilities of such multilevel, inter-institutional and community processes.

This MOOC addresses gender inequality and the social exclusion of women, children, elderly persons and persons with disabilities in urban contexts. Participants of this MOOC will explore how urban transport and infrastructure in open spaces produce inequalities and injustice and will gain a practical and critical perspective on this through lectures, case-studies and interviews.

This MOOC addresses the lack of safe, inclusive, and stimulating public spaces for children in Latin American (and beyond) urban contexts. Participants of this MOOC will explore, analyse and propose initiatives and strategies within their own urban context that focus on early childhood development and the question of how the city can become an “urban landscape of care”.

This MOOC addresses crime, violence and social conflicts that undermine urban safety and security globally, thereby engendering a regime of fear and widespread episodic disruptions of social and economic lives. Participants of this MOOC will gain a better understanding of the driving forces, nature and dynamics of urban social conflict (especially in developing societies undergoing rapid urbanisation) and build capacity in peacebuilding and conflict management.

This MOOC addresses the increasing vulnerability to natural hazards of coastal urban populations in Java due to the impact of climate change. Participants of this MOOC will critically address the emerging problems and their mainly top-down approach to CC adaptation. They will learn about solutions at the community level and how through the operationalization of “resilience from below”, citizens become “agents of change” and actively cultivate a climate change resilience culture.

This MOOC addresses the various dimensions of social exclusion in diverse urban contexts. Participants of this MOOC will explore the visible and invisible barriers to inclusion while advancing knowledge on built environment and universal design principles and practices.

This MOOC addresses the housing problems of Brazilian cities. Participants of this MOOC will get a better insight in the complex reality of life in vila communities and the challenges related to their upgrading. They will also delve into the practice of technical assistance in social housing projects.

This MOOC addresses the question of unbalanced and inequitable urbanisation in the Global South. Participants of this MOOC will delve into conceptual questions concerning gender inclusivity in cities and the relations between urban infrastructure and exclusionary practices. They will be confronted with voices and narratives that are often sidelined in the urban planning process and develop an intersectional understanding of urbanisation mechanisms and processes.