Community and Regional Planning (June 2025)

Just Sustainability Transitions: Designing Urban Innovations for Justice and Systemic Change

Are you passionate about sustainability and social justice as drivers of transformative change? This course invites you to explore how emerging urban innovations and technological advancements can be designed to facilitate just sustainability transitions. In Just Sustainability Transitions, you will envision sustainable futures and explore practical pathways to achieve them, gaining tools to collaboratively design and drive change across environmental, economic, social, technological, and governance dimensions.

Through hands-on learning, this course blends cutting-edge research and theories with critical reflection and real-world action. You will engage with key topics such as societal change, urban justice, smart cities, social and environmental movements, transition management, and systemic design. Emphasizing diverse perspectives and inclusive collaboration, the course equips you to develop sustainable solutions at both local and systemic levels.

Working in interdisciplinary teams, you will address real-world challenges through peer-based learning, applying design thinking and co-creation strategies to design urban innovation. By the end of the course, you will critically evaluate sustainability processes at multiple scales, reflect on ethical dilemmas, and shape your own vision of just transitions. This course provides a unique opportunity to engage with sustainability transitions across sectors and disciplines, preparing you to influence the future of urban innovation and just transitions.

Cities Experimenting with Sustainability Transformations

This course explores key conceptual and practical aspects of sustainability transformations, focusing on global case studies of urban experimentations. Cities worldwide are grappling with unprecedented challenges as they strive to meet ambitious environmental targets. Managing these transformations requires a holistic understanding that goes beyond the capacities of any single organization, encompassing complex economic, technical, political, and social dimensions.

Urban experimentation and social innovation laboratories (labs) are emerging as crucial tools for addressing these multifaceted challenges. This course provides an in-depth examination of such labs, with a special focus on Vancouver as a real-world laboratory. You will explore how urban labs foster collaborative solutions through innovative approaches to sustainability.

By engaging with case studies from around the globe, you will gain insights into the methods and practices used to facilitate urban sustainability transitions. The course introduces key lab methodologies and offers practical skills applicable to uncovering and implementing sustainability transformations. By the end of the course, you will be equipped with the knowledge and tools to critically assess and contribute to sustainability efforts in urban contexts, preparing you to work across sectors to address global environmental challenges.

Prerequisites: No prerequisites

Minors (students aged under 19 at the start of the program): Not Accepted

Planning for Sustainable Food Systems in an Era of Food Price Hike

The world market prices of food commodities have increased dramatically since 2006-07 and 2010-11, reversing the long-run pattern of declining prices of food since the past 50 years, with significant impacts for low-income groups who routinely spend a large portion of their income on food consumption. This course will provide students with an overview of the key challenges undermining food systems sustainability in the contemporary era, especially as they relate to the increasingly frequency of food price shocks. This includes attention to a range of demand and supply-side influences, including climatic and environmental stresses on food production, as well as the financialization of food commodities, among other factors. Students will gain an understanding of key theoretical precepts in this domain, including debates on food justice and food sovereignty, agroecology, and climate resilience. A comparative Global South and Global North lens will be adopted. The course will rely on lectures, classroom discussions and guest speakers from leading thinktanks such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Bank and International Food Policy Research Institute, to critically examine key underlying concepts.

Policy Evaluation for Planners

Policymakers are increasingly accountable to the public regarding the efficacy of their programs undertaken using tax funds. The class will offer hands-on experience, equipping students with the qualitative and quantitative skills necessary for policy analysis and program evaluation in government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and international bodies. Students will explore diverse methodologies for policy analysis, applying these frameworks to real-world scenarios. Key objectives include effective communication and professional conduct. Learners will be able to assess the trade-offs involved in policy changes, identify stakeholders affected by these changes, and utilize standard analytical tools to devise policy interventions.

Prerequisites: No prerequisites

Minors (students aged under 19 at the start of the program): Not Accepted