Insegnamento a.a. 2024-2025

Classes: 26 (II sem.)

Instructors:
Class 26: IRENE BIANCHI

International culture, open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity. Probably these are fundamental requirements for any specialization course at Bocconi or Politecnico. In addition, we are looking for students having some curiosity for the complexity of urban systems as sociotechnical environments representing promising opportunities for sustainability.

The course “Designing Sustainable Cities” is divided into two parts (Modules) of 3 credits each. The Module A, taught by Prof. Grazia Concilio (Politecnico di Milano), touches on the articulations of urban sustainability challenges and perspectives of sustainability transition; it focuses on opportunities offered by new approaches to urban design to deal with the sustainability of air, water, and soil resources. The Module B, taught by Prof. Francesco GRILLO (Bocconi University), will deal with the four areas (housing, waste, mobility, energy) that corresponds to the four main innovation/ industrial challenges to cities towards net zero: it will also touch upon European policies for cities and related indicators.

Module A The city is the stage where the most important and urgent crises are revealed and experienced. Environmental, social, and economic crises are more and more protagonists of urban life and shape citizens and government behaviors, decisions, visions, perspectives. Here, designing transformations is a challenging responsibility, often underestimated per its complexity and potentials; it is a dialogue, even harsh, between different disciplines and knowledge, between theories and practices, between constraints and visions. Within this perspective the module will be structured across 4 sections.

1. Urban Challenges. 
2. Air resource and quality.
3. Soil resource and services.
4. Water resource.Module

 

Module B  Sustainability, inclusiveness, attractiveness of cities can be broken down into four areas: how efficiently are people and goods being moved within cities? How are communities minimizing the waste that they generate and how well are they disposing of it? How efficiently are houses used so that we do not leave anybody behind, and we optimize consumption of energy? And lastly, how much energy do cars, houses, waste themselves give back to the city? These are four main challenges that involve design, planning, technologies, incentives.

At the end of the course student will be able to...

At the end of the course student will be able to...

• Lectures
• Practical Exercises
• Individual works / Assignments
• Collaborative Works / Assignments

Classworks and active participation to class activities and discussions

Presentation of the case studies along the four sections of Module A

Presentation of the case studies along the four sections of Module B

Group essays (one per each module)

	Continuous assessment	Partial exams	General exam
Oral individual exam			x
Individual Works/ Assignment (report, exercise, presentation, project work etc.)	x
Collaborative Works / Assignment (report, exercise, presentation, project work etc.)	x
Active class participation (virtual, attendance)	x

The overall evaluation will jointly consider:

1. Classworks and active participation to class activities and discussions

2. The presentation of the case studies along the four sections of Module A

3. The presentation of the case studies along the four sections of Module B

4. Final group essays (one per each module) to be discussed during the exam The exam will take place in form of a dialogue on the final essay.

The course mixes teaching lectures, guest testimonials and class discussions.

There is no textbook.

The instructors will provide specific readings on the course e-Learning platform