Challenges of teaching sustainable urbanism

Accepted Manuscript Title: Challenges of Teaching Sustainable Urbanism Author: Vlatko P. Korobar Jasmina Siljanoska PII: DOI: Reference:

S0378-7788(15)00348-5 http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2015.04.049 ENB 5841

To appear in:

ENB

Received date: Revised date: Accepted date:

5-12-2014 2-4-2015 28-4-2015

Please cite this article as: V.P. Korobar, J. Siljanoska, Challenges of Teaching Sustainable Urbanism, Energy and Buildings (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2015.04.049 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

HIGHLIGHTS

 Conceptual framework for sustainable urbanism proposed with livability as anchor point  Comprehensive list of relevant teaching and learning strategies has been suggested

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 Problem-based, case-based and re-planning as project-based learning as discipline sensitive methods

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Challenges of Teaching Sustainable Urbanism Vlatko P. Korobar1, Jasmina Siljanoska2

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1. INTRODUCTION The heritage of teaching urbanism in many schools in Europe and especially in Southeast Europe has a long and rather stubborn tradition. Originating from the German tradition of connecting urban planning to technical disciplines, the teaching of urbanism has been dominantly, and in some places exclusively, connected to higher education in architecture. Efforts that have been made to respond to the growing pressure of interdisciplinarity have mainly been accommodated by tangential inclusion of disciplines in social sciences leaving unhindered the leading role of architectural knowledge as represented through urban design or townscape issues and a lasting preoccupation with building codes and rules to the extent to which they influence architectural “freedom of expression”.3 Despite the fact that this statement is a slight exaggeration of the real situation, it does help in understanding the fact that issues concerning sustainable development have entered higher education and the social agenda in general primarily through other fields of instruction and especially through the civil sector. Schools of architecture have found themselves more comfortable in situations in which their segment of ‘responsibility’ for sustainable development has been reduced to technical issues of building fabric, improvement of energy efficiency in building and similar issues, rather than related to issues that reflect the wider aspects of sustainability.

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Indeed, this situation cannot be detached from the wider social condition in which sustainable development has been accepted only as a priority that stands high on political agendas, but very low on agendas of daily conduct. Issues of sustainable development can relevantly survive in the field of higher education only if viewed within the context of societal values and priorities. Although an issue of global importance, sustainable development is highly influenced by local cultural contexts and they must be taken into consideration when discussing issues of teaching sustainable development in general and sustainable urbanism in particular. As E. Dimitrova has put it, this process ”…would require inventive and flexible approaches in the academic field rather than a linear process of planning, monitoring and quantitative evaluation of results”.4

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However, it would be wrong to assume the current situation of higher education in urbanism and its legacy in Southeast Europe, as totally inadequate to respond to the challenge of sustainable development. The higher education in urban planning in Europe in general, in the second half of the 20th century has been constantly drifting between the ‘spatial’ and ‘a-spatial’ shores. If we hold true the prediction of P. R. Berke et al. that the key issue of planning in the future would be the reconciliation of the diverging demands of rationality, participation and design, then we are heading towards the difficult task of “integrating rationality, consensus building and visionary design”5 as the core of teaching urbanism in general and especially of sustainable urbanism. If we accept this view as relevant, then the core questions in our case are what issues need to be addressed in order to teach sustainable urbanism, what approach would be most appropriate and what challenges need to be faced in this process. Before we try to answer these questions, we will take a look at relevant documents accepted at international level that might inform our thinking and our approach. 1

Faculty of Architecture, University “SS. Cyril and Methodius”, Skopje, Macedonia, [email protected] Faculty of Architecture, University “SS. Cyril and Methodius”, Skopje, Macedonia, [email protected] 3 For an in-depth discussion see: EC, 1997. The EU Compendium of Spatial Planning Systems and Policies, http://www.espace-project.org/publications/EUcompendium.pdf. 4 Dimitrova, E. 2014. The ‘sustainable development’ concept in urban planning education: lessons learned on a Bulgarian path, Journal of Cleaner Production 62, p. 120, http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro 5 Berke, P.R. et al. 2006. Urban Land Use Planning, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, p.51 2

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2. HOW SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF CITIES IS PERCIEVED In order to identify the core issues and viewpoints connected to sustainable development of cities we will make a brief overview of significant documents that have been adopted at international level. A wider selection has been made in order to reflect the EU policy in this area, the standpoints on sustainable cities and urbanism of professional bodies and educational associations of planning and the strategy of UNESCO towards teaching and learning for a sustainable future.

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2.1 The EU policy on sustainable cities The policy of EU on developing sustainable human settlements has a long history and an ever growing number of documents that address the issue in a wide scope between general policies and specific tasks. An early document following after the Earth Summit of 1992, as is the Aalborg Charter6 primarily dealt with general aspects of sustainability and recognised European cities and towns as ‘key players in the process of changing lifestyles, production, consumption and spatial patterns’. It uses an early version of the key trilogy of ‘social justice, sustainable economies, and environmental sustainability’ as the basis of sustainable development, but extensively involves itself in detecting the areas of primary importance, defining the concept of sustainability as “a creative, local, balance-seeking process which extends into all areas of local decision making”7, recognising citizens as key actors, the involvement of community, local self-governance, while at the same time introducing the concept of resolving problems by negotiating outwards. At the level of urban spatial development it mentions sustainable land-use patterns and sustainable urban mobility, but the repertoire of issues mentioned is basically connected to reduction of the need for excess mobility.

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Later documents are more specifically oriented towards separate spatial issues and the instruments for reaching the goal of sustainable cities. Such documents are, for example, the Leipzig Charter and the Toledo Declaration. In 2007, the Leipzig Charter8 stated that in order to fulfil their social and economic roles, cities must “succeed in maintaining the social balance within and among them, ensuring their cultural diversity and establishing high quality in the fields of urban design, architecture and environment”.9 The charter recognizes the importance of greater use of integrated urban development policy approaches in the areas of creation of quality public spaces and modernisation of infrastructure networks, while improving energy efficiency. Special emphasis has been put on the improvement of the condition of deprived neighbourhoods including both their physical and social and economic environment and the provision of efficient and affordable urban transport.

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In the period of three years between the Leipzig Charter and the Toledo Declaration, a number of related documents were adopted, among them the Marseille Statement10 which reaffirmed and complemented the Leipzig Charter in the light of the financial, economic and social crisis. The Statement expressed the view that “cities will have to deal with the tensions and risks of fragmentation (...) while simultaneously searching for excellence, integrating new sections of the population and showing solidarity with the most vulnerable people”11 emphasising that sustainable and inclusive urban development can only be achieved with a multi-sectoral, integrated approach. In 2010, the Europe 202012 strategy complemented the three main objectives of the European sustainable development strategy outlined in the Leipzig Charter – economic prosperity, social equity 6

Aalborg Charter, 1994. http://ec.europa.eu/environment/urban/pdf/aalborg_charter.pdf. Ibid 8 Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities, 2007. Informal Ministerial Meeting on Urban Development and Territorial Cohesion. http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/archive/themes/urban/leipzig_charter.pdf 9 Ibid 10 Marseille Statement.Final Statement by the ministers in charge of urban development.Marseille, 25.11.2008. http://www.eib.org/attachments/jessica_marseille_statement_en.pdf 11 Ibid. 12 Europe 2020: A European Strategy for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth, 03.03.2010 Brussels. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2010:2020:FIN:EN:PDF 7

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and cohesion and environmental protection with the objectives of smart growth, sustainable growth and inclusive growth. In the same year the Toledo Declaration13 tried to address simultaneously the current urban challenges and the need to consolidate a European urban agenda in the future. The Toledo Reference Document14 on integrated urban regeneration and its strategic potential for a smarter, more sustainable and socially inclusive urban development in Europe mentioned three areas of special importance: cities and cultural heritage, building rehabilitation and revaluing deteriorated public spaces, while providing new open spaces.

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It bases the importance of the ‘cities and heritage’ issue on the fact that they are crucial in keeping alive the collective memory of the European city model. The Declaration underlines the fact that “besides protecting the heritage from a physical point of view, it is often necessary to guarantee its inhabitability and attractiveness in order to keep it really alive”.15

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The issue of building rehabilitation, although primarily concerned with architectural improvement of the existing built stock in terms of energy-efficiency, accessibility, upgraded standard of living etc., also has wider urban (design) implications as it would promote diversity and identity, primarily of large housing estates and adapt the residential typologies to the emerging demographic patterns in Europe.

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The third area noted as revaluing of deteriorated public spaces and providing new open spaces, together with afore mentioned protection or requalification of the built stock was expected to “contribute not only towards the improvement of the urban scene, landscape and place quality of many of our cities’ urban fabrics, (…) but also to increase their attractiveness and the local residents’ identification with the urban environment and their community”.16

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The follow-up of the Leipzig Charter presented in the report 5 Years after the Leipzig Charter – Integrated Urban Development as a Prerequisite for a Sustainable City 17 states that “approaches to integrated urban (district) development have increasingly become a guiding principle (…) either as part of national programmes and/or (as) local strategies for a holistic development of urban areas”18, while the future challenges for European cities “will consist of finding more integrated courses of action in many topics of urban (district) development despite increasingly limited financial resources”19.

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The overview of relevant documents shows a constant increase of interest in the built environment of European cities as part of their sustainable development, which has been given equal importance with issues that have been held of primary importance in earlier documents such as social justice, sustainable economies and environmental issues. From an initial state when only discrete issues of sustainable land use patterns and reducing excess mobility have been considered, attention has been shifted towards more integrated urban development approaches. The more recent documents outline areas of major concern and action that are instrumental for the teaching of sustainable urbanism such as issues of neighbourhoods, public spaces, revaluing of existing urban spaces, providing of more 13

Toledo Declaration, 2010. Informal Ministerial Meeting on Urban Development.Toledo, 22 June, http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/archive/newsroom/pdf/201006_toledo_declaration_en.pdf 14 Toledo Reference Document on Integrated Urban Regeneration and its strategic potential for a smarter, more sustainable and socially inclusive urban development in Europe. 2010. http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/archive/newsroom/pdf/201006_toledo_declaration_en.pdf 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 5 Years after the Leipzig Charter – Integrated Urban Development as a Prerequisite for a Sustainable City http://www.hallbarastader.gov.se/Bazment/Alias/Files/?5yearsliepziegcharter 18 Ibid 19 Ibid

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open spaces, etc. An important question that arises within this context is whether sustainable urbanism should be considered as a discipline in its own right, or it should be a specialisation approachable from various disciplinary backgrounds. Looking at the existing situation in teaching (sustainable) urbanism these urban space related issues simultaneously call for the strengthening of its interdisciplinary connectivity, but at the same time for a stronger emphasis on a disciplinary, area specific orientation which should result in novel approaches that hold the idea of sustainability firmly on the list of priorities that should be met. This viewpoint is further supported by the documents on sustainable urban development that professional bodies of planners and planning education associations have adopted in the past period.

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2.2 Professional organisations of planners on sustainable cities Professional organisations of planners, in a long period of time, have kept the issues of sustainability in general and especially the planning and development of sustainable cities high on their agendas. We overview the documents of two of the most exposed professional organisations in the field in order to recognise the issues that are given the highest priority by professional planners when considering the need to act towards more sustainable cities.

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At its 51st World Congress “Futures of Cities” held in Copenhagen in 2007, the International Federation for Housing and Planning created the “Copenhagen Agenda for Sustainable Cities”.20 The Copenhagen agenda is the product of a survey that included 50 of the world’s most important urban experts from all parts of the world and from a wide range of disciplines. It states that “by nature, cities are environmentally friendly because they concentrate populations, and reduce the amount of energy needed for heating and transport of goods and people. But so far we have not succeeded in creating environmentally sustainable cities, as we have failed to understand the complexity of the urban challenges that we face. (…) Current urban development ignores the fact that we need cities to be environmentally, socially and economically sustainable at the same time. (…) These challenges must be met within city borders. (…) Therefore, we need to optimise and concentrate all our efforts into developing and strengthening the sustainable city”.21 The answers of these experts, who believe that we need a radical change of mindset and new strategies, have been distilled into ten principles which put special importance in three related areas calling for a new way of conceptualising the city, a new way of managing it and a new way of planning it. These principles are aimed at urban residents, academics, professionals and leaders.

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The 46th world congress of ISOCARP, held in Nairobi in 2010, was engaged in the topic “Sustainable City / Developing World”.22 The Congress concluded that because the ongoing process of urbanisation is unstoppable, irreversible and is taking place primarily in the developing world, “cities in the developing world (…) hold the key to sustainable development of our planet”.23 The themes dealt with in the workshops were: Effective policy-making for sustainable urbanisation; The impact of spatial planning, urban design and built form on urban sustainability; Urban planning instruments for sustainability and Improving governance for sustainable urban development. In her conclusions at the end of the Congress, Shipra Narang Suri, as general rapporteur, posed several important questions that have a direct bearing on the professional attitude towards urban sustainability: How are spatial planning and urban design involved in the process of achieving environmental, organizational and socio-economic sustainability? How do we renew and re-launch the concept of (urban) sustainability at a comprehensive as well as “practice oriented” level? How is urban planning contributing to improving urban governance (and vice versa)? Could less statutory plans and more negotiated policies be the way to achieving a more sustainable land use management? 20

Copenhagen Agenda for Sustainable Cities, 2007. http://www.dac.dk/en/dac-cities/sustainable-cities/historicmilestones/2007--copenhagen-agenda-working-for-sustainable-cities/ 21 Ibid. 22 46th Congress ISOCARP, Sustainable City Developing World, 19-23 Sep. 2010, Nairobi, Kenya http://old.isocarp.org/index.php?id=659 23 Ibid.

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What are the criteria for transferability of good practices from one national/economic/political context to another? In an effort to direct us towards possible answers she mentioned five ‘big ideas’ including integration, resilience, economy and employment, flexibility and adaptability of planning instruments and a dialogue with traditional urban design and built form, where the latter includes: interplay with nature, resources, aesthetics and energy efficiency, mixed use and dense urban morphology, pedestrian and mass transit.

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The influence of professional organisations and bodies on the perception of aspects of sustainable development can be illustrated with the latest development in the preparation of the Sustainable Development Goals24, which are to replace the Millennium Development Goals set by the UN at the turn of the millennium, the final ratification of which is expected to be in September 2015 by the UN General Assembly. As S.N.Suri reports “Due to the efforts and persistence of a global network of organisations (…) a stand-alone goal on cities and human settlements (popularly known as the urban SDG) has been included in the (…) Document (…). The proposed SDG 11 reads: “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.” Accompanying this proposal are seven proposed targets pertaining to housing, transport, planning, natural/cultural heritage, resilience, environment and open space.”25

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Professional organisations of planners have more explicitly stated their concern and interest in substantive and procedural issues connected to the planning and development of urban space, without neglecting all other aspects related to the social, economic, and environmental domains. It is obvious that the standpoints of professional organisations are in accord with the policies analised earlier, but their increased concern for more ‘traditional’ areas of planning shows the growing professional community which is interested in ‘translating’ the general principles of sustainability into the domain of urban planning. To the list of areas mentioned earlier the documents of professional organisations have added several important areas relevant to the teaching of sustainable urbanism, such as national/economic/political context, modes of planning and management and a new dialogue with traditional urban design and built form. The stated fact that cities in the developing world hold the key to sustainable development of the planet brings to light the need for increased awareness that urban problems might be similar, yet they appear in different contexts and are different in scope and nature. The great variety of available means and applied solutions to existing problems requires the transfer of good practices to be part of the teaching process relying on a clear contextual basis.

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2.3 Educational associations of planning on teaching sustainable development Forms of association in order to improve education for sustainable development have been increasingly growing in the last decade and they include either existing international associations related to planning that have paid considerable attention to issues of sustainability in the past period, such as the Global Planning Education Association Network or the Association of European Schools of Planning, or other networks related strictly to issues of sustainability such as Copernicus Alliance, Engineering Education for Sustainable Development or University Educators for Sustainable Development. The continuing debate on teaching sustainable development, in which recurring dilemmas have become commonplace and almost no answers can be deemed definitive, has added important aspects to the debate. J. S. Coral points to the need for revision of pedagogical processes in the education of engineers related to issues of sustainability. “Most learning/education is functional or informational learning, which is oriented towards socialization and vocational goals that are not necessarily appropriate for the challenge of sustainability. This has been reinforced by the introduction of managerial and instrumental views of education in industrialized nations educational systems, which derives from a fundamentally mechanistic and reductionist social and cultural paradigm. This 24

Open Working Group proposal for Sustainable Development Goals, http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/focussdgs.html 25 Suri S. N., The Importance of an Urban Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for Planning and Planners, 2014. http://isocarp.org/importance-urban-sustainable-development-goal-sdg-planning-planners/

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mechanistic education model can block the holistic vision of reality which is a prerequisite for solving sustainability issues. Educational researchers highlight (…) the stimulation of self-reflective learning, in which students are exposed to a range of differing views, and continually encouraged to challenge their own assumptions.” 26

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One early document of the EESD network, the Declaration of Barcelona, states that “higher education institutions must not restrict themselves to generating disciplinary knowledge and developing skills. As part of a larger cultural system, their role is also to teach, foster and develop the moral and ethical values required by society. Universities need to prepare future professionals who should be able to use their expertise not only in a scientific or technological context, but equally for broader social, political and environmental needs. This is not simply a matter of adding another layer to the technical aspects of education, but rather addressing the whole educational process in a more holistic way, by considering how the student will interact with others in his or her professional life, directly or indirectly”. 27

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The educational associations have added to the list a of challenges and tasks in teaching sustainable urbanism a key aspect which is related to the nature of teaching in a university context and which has been dismissed in recent years for various reasons: the holistic vision which rests upon moral and ethical values. This should not be confused with the notion of interdisciplinarity, as it refers to the entire educational process and the need for a holistic approach which is equally important when dealing both with disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge. We have highlighted this aspect particularly, as it is of special importance to schools of architecture and engineering as the major hubs for teaching urbanism in SEE. This teaching paradigm shift calls for a new conceptual framework that would accommodate the holistic approach and introduce suitable methods in teaching sustainable urbanism. Thus, schools of architecture/planning, especially in SEE, will find themselves before the demanding job of simultaneously defining their disciplinary confines, the skills that would allow students to apply their knowledge in a complex social environment and the appropriate teaching strategies that would deliver the desired outcomes.

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2.4 The UNESCO Teaching and Learning Strategies for a Sustainable Future The UNESCO Teaching and Learning Strategies for a Sustainable Future28 simply bring ‘new vigour’ to issues that have already been dealt with at earlier times, since issues connected to the limits of the Earth’s resources and their potential to support our way of living have long been on the educational agenda. What is important in this case is first, that they are addressing education ‘in all its forms and at all levels’ and second, that in this process there is increased orientation towards teacher education. Hence, the suggested strategies are meant to be a vehicle for improving of the role of educators as they ‘integrate contemporary thinking in educational circles on curriculum reform and effective teaching and learning strategies’. As stated in the document the entire approach is based upon “an experiential learning process that invites teachers to analyse and interpret information in a variety of forms (…); review new knowledge in the light of current understandings; reflect upon and generalise from learning experiences; develop skills in a wide variety of teaching and learning strategies; and adapt and apply new ideas and skills to practical educational tasks.”29 The list of teaching and learning strategies proposed by UNESCO includes: experiential learning, storytelling, values education, enquiry learning, appropriate assessment, future problem solving, learning outside the classroom and community problem solving. It is obvious that the common denominator of the strategies is the notion of immediate experience, combined with the ability to 26

Coral J.S., Pedagogical Shift to Education for Sustainable Development, 2008. https://www.upc.edu/eesdobservatory/why/reports/EESD_Observer_2008_.pdf 27 Declaration of Barcelona, EESD International Conference, Barcelona 2004, https://www.upc.edu/eesdobservatory/BCN%20Declaration%20EESD_english.pdf 28 The UNESCO Teaching and Learning Strategies for a Sustainable Future http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/ 29 Ibid.

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assess a problem situation and propose a solution in close cooperation with the community involved. These strategies are not new to urban planning education and many of them constitute a regular repertoire of teaching approaches in schools of architecture and planning, where they are applied separately or most often in conjunction. For example, many of these strategies are inextricably linked to regularly used forms of teaching such as studios or workshops which are embedded in real social and spatial conditions, providing firsthand experience. Strategies such as learning outside the classroom and community problem solving provide experience in immediate communication, enquiry, problem analysis and value recognition and by linking schools from different regions and cultural settings students are sensitised to the variety of possible approaches and solutions. As experiential learning primarily rests within the student and comprises of four interrelated segments: action, reflection, abstraction and application, it results in a change of students’ attitude and knowledge as a consequence of them being exposed to real life conditions. Novel approaches are also being developed. A new approach that might be listed under storytelling has been developed by Klaske Havik, known as ‘Terristories’.30 It connects architecture/urbanism with literary techniques supplying sensitive reading of places from the level of landscape to the scale of human everyday life. As much as the introduction of novel approaches that enlarge the scope of teaching and learning strategies are important, equally as important is the further development of existing approaches that should be injected with new vigour springing from socially relevant issues and community involving exercises. These strategies shift education from training to enquiry and discovering and lead to understanding of contextual parameters comprising of physical and non-physical aspects connected to ideas, values and attitudes that should be made as explicit as possible in the process of education since sustainable urbanism is to safeguard public interest.

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This lengthy overview of sustainability related documents adopted by EU bodies, professional and educational associations in the field of planning was needed in order to show the continuously increasing sensitivity towards spatial/urban issues that could be addressed in a successful way only with the inclusion of urban planners who could supply innovative solutions anchored in a holistic view and applied through a participatory and inclusive process of planning. The overview shows the shift in the general approach when relating sustainability and urban space issues: from a point when only sustainable land-use patterns and sustainable urban mobility were mentioned, through recognition of the need for a multi-sectoral, integrated approach to urban development with special emphasis on cities and cultural heritage, building rehabilitation and revaluing deteriorated public spaces, to a point when the appropriate approach to spatial issues has been recognised as a factor contributing towards creating or recreating citizenship, based on the culture of the European city and the importance of the public realm in it. This development shows that finally, almost the entire traditional field of instruction in urbanism has been covered only this time embedded in a much wider social, political and environmental context which renders inappropriate the traditional technical and technological approach in teaching and the fundamentally mechanistic and reductionist social and cultural paradigm related to it. Higher education institutions must respond adequately to these challenges by insisting on the holistic vision of reality while strengthening their disciplinary profiles and expertise on which to build their interdisciplinary interconnectedness with other disciplines in the arena of sustainability. In this process, the approaches chosen in teaching sustainable urbanism will be of great importance as they will influence the learners and prepare them to react to the ever changing circumstances of our everyday life. 3. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABLE URBANISM Sustainability as an issue, in general, and sustainable urbanism, in particular, have entered curricula in schools of architecture and urbanism in the last decades providing a host of different names for similar areas of expertise and instruction. The obvious fact is that the aspects of sustainability can be relevantly covered only by an interdisciplinary approach that spans areas dealing with social, political, economic and environmental issues. This poses a serious question of the ever increasing scope of issues to be covered. But, the daily working environment of planners has always been complex and 30

Havik, Klaske and Veldhuisen, Sebastiaan, 2009, ‘Terristoties: Site Specific Research and Design’, OASE Journal for Architecture, no. 80; pp.70-76

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dynamic and it has certainly not changed to a less demanding one by the emerging requirements of sustainability. As Berke et al. put it, “sustainability represents a big idea in contemporary planning and has potential to serve as a central organizing principle for planners in their efforts to reconcile conflicts and guide change in ways that create settlement patterns that are livable and sustainable”.31

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It has to be noted, although it is already a generally accepted view, that there is considerable difference between conditions of cities in the ‘developed world’ and the ‘developing world’ and these differences are reflected in the tasks faced by planners in each of these cases. Despite this difference in tasks, in both cases, the sustainable approach calls for similar instruments that could be used in pursue of a sustainable city, but these instruments must be sensitive to local social, economic, political and spatial circumstances and the teaching of sustainable urbanism must put special emphasis on the importance and development of this sensitivity.

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As early as 1996, Campbell, trying to explain the contradictions that exist among the goals of sustainable development, uses a triangle where each vertex is a goal, while the sides or edges of the triangle show the contradictions among the goals that they connect.32 This represents the well-known triangle of the three ‘E’s - ecology, economy and equity, the goals pursued by sustainable development (fig. 1). The three primary conflicts among goals of sustainable development are represented as property, resource and development conflicts.

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Fig.1 The sustainability triangle according to Scott Campbell

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Later, building on the Campbell’s triangle, Godschalk constructed the ‘sustainability prism’ (actually in geometrical terms a triangular pyramid, a tetrahedron) adding a fourth point or vertex, representing the goal of livability.33 (fig.2) Godschalk claims that the sustainability tetrahedron represents interactions among core values of sustainability: equity, economy, ecology and livability. Using Campbell’s triangle as the basis of the tetrahedron, the edges connecting the livability vertex with the tree E’s represent three new conflicts: gentrification conflict between livability and equity, growth management conflict between livability and economic growth and green cities conflict between livability and ecology or the conflicting views whether built or natural environment should have primacy.

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Berke P.R. et al. 2006. Urban Land Use Planning, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, p.37 Campbell, Scott 1996, Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities?: Urban Planning and the Contradictions of Sustainable Development, Journal of the American Planning Association, vol.62, no.3, pp.296-313. 33 Godschalk, David R. 2004. Land Use Planning Challenges: Coping with Conflicts in Visions of Sustainable Development and Livable Communities, Journal of the American Planning Association, vol.70, no.1, pp.5-13. 32

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Fig. 2 The sustainability ‘prism’ according to David R. Godschalk

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Justifying the spatial transformation of the sustainability triangle, Berke et al. explain the vital point of adding the livability vertex by stating that “livability encompasses two-dimensional features of the built environment emphasized by the three E’s (economy, ecology, equity) of sustainable development, and the three-dimensional aspects of public space, movement systems, and building design. Livability thus expands the land use orientation of the triangular model to include urban design ranging from the microscale of the block, street and building to the macroscale of the city, metropolis and region”. 34

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The heart of the tetrahedron should represent the sustainable development reached through the balance of the four goals. “At the prism’s heart lies the elusive, perhaps utopian, ideally sustainable (and livable) urban area.”35 If we take the sustainability tetrahedron as a conceptual tool to understand the complex, interdisciplinary nature of the sustainable development of urban areas, then the livability vertex is the disciplinary anchor in terms of sustainable urbanism, as this goal falls within the disciplinary confines of urbanism and in our case of sustainable urbanism. Being anchored to the livability vertex serves the purpose of clearly defining the area of expertise covered by urban planners, but simultaneously shows the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability issues by the relation to other goals of sustainable development through the corresponding edges. Thus, the tetrahedron can be used simultaneously to relate and ‘check’ each spatial issue/solution with other goals in a search for a possible balance within the expected conflicting circumstances.

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We consider the livability vertex as the disciplinary anchor for sustainable urbanism because the concept of livability is closely related to numerous aspects of urban design, while it also serves as the formative basis for new approaches to city form. As Ling at al. have stated these new approaches “recognise that design and structure can be very influential in the life of a town or city and indeed to the building of community in and of itself. They also create novel contexts for a community to develop in a more sustainable way”. 36 Furthermore, livability is crucial to the existence of a sustainable community as the concept itself is linked to quality of life which takes into consideration environmental concerns. Thus we take livability as an umbrella concept that can reflect the complex nature of urban space and its desired qualities which reminds us that we must deal with a threedimensional spatial world, while at the same time providing a tool for recognizing and dealing with the inherent conflicts of sustainability. The next question that needs to be answered within the search for a conceptual framework for sustainable urbanism is to define the sustainable planning approach that would as closely as possible encompass the full dimensions of reality. We turn again to Berke et al. who state that ”we do not need to create a grand overarching strategy, but simply point out some useful ideas for improving the 34

Berke P.R. et al. 2006. Urban Land Use Planning, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, p.38 Ibid., p.40 36 Ling C. et al. 2006. What Makes a City Livable? http://crcresearch.org/case-studies/case-studies-sustainableinfrastructure/land-use-planning/what-makes-a-city-liveable 35

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performance of planning practice in reconciling conflicts and promoting a substantive vision that balances the four goals of the sustainable prism”.37 They suggest a participatory approach that is embedded in the three major conceptual traditions in planning – rational planning, consensus building and urban design. If we represent these three traditions in a form of a triangle, we emphasise the need to integrate the three planning traditions in pursue of livable and sustainable places through a process we label as responsive planning. (fig. 3) If we take further the analogy of this triangle with the sustainability triangle then we should look for possible tensions along the edges of the triangle or among the different demands of rationality, participation and design. In a simplified manner we could say that the tensions between rational planning and consensus building are represented by conflicting values and goals as perceived by the politicians, professionals and the public. Although rational planning provides a comprehensible connection between goals formulation and plan implementation, its critics insist that it does not provide for necessary adaptations that would incorporate the notions and values of stakeholders. Thus rational planning is perceived as an expert driven exercise based on values held true by professional and not necessarily by the wider public. The tensions between consensus building and urban design would be at a more local level by conflicting, often short term objectives as perceived by the politicians, professionals and the public. Because consensus building is primarily experiential and subjective and relies on shared knowledge and values it is concerned more with process than place. This becomes the major tension between consensus building and urban design. The tensions between rational planning and urban design would primarily be related to professionals and their notions and preferences and their approaches to development of urban space. Normally, rational planning would primarily deal with quantifiable conditions, forecasts and numerical accounts, consequences of continuing trends or newly emerged issues, but would not provide a representation of the future condition of a place, nor a vision of the expected outcome of the plan implementation on the actual changes in urban space. On the contrary, urban design is primarily concerned with the ways in which the forecasted changes would be accommodated in space and what effect they would have on urban form. Berke at al. comment that “by drawing on the strengths of the rational, consensus building, and visionary-design models of planning, planners and their communities can take a collaborative planning process to guide urban change”.38 Thus, the core disciplinary demands of sustainable urbanism and consequently its teaching should berelated to technical/analytical skills needed to recognise and predict changes and their consequences, design skills to interpret and articulate spatial transformations and consensus building skills to mediate between different values and priorities.

Fig. 3 The triangle of responsive planning (after Berke et al.)

If we connect the three modes of planning to a single, yet complex, goal of providing livable places or the goal of livability, we will again end up with a tetrahedron where the vertices are represented by the goal of livability and the modes of planning. Certainly, this tetrahedron does not fully resemble the sustainability tetrahedron, as we should look at it as being composed of a basis with three modes of planning leading to the fourth vertex, which is livability, the goal of responsive planning, thus connecting a goal and the disciplinary modes of its implementation. At this moment, it is beyond our scope of interest but, one could further develop similar tetrahedra for the other three goals of the sustainability tetrahedron beginning with their ‘disciplinary triangles’. 37 38

Berke P.R. et al. 2006. Urban Land Use Planning, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, p.45 Ibid. p.51

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A conceptual framework of sustainable urbanism could be represented by these two tetrahedra connected at the livability vertex. These inverted tetrahedra would simultaneously show the disciplinary context of sustainable urbanism, while providing ample evidence that pursuing the goal of livable and sustainable places heavily leans and is interconnected with the other goals of ecology, equity and economy. (fig. 4) This conceptual framework clearly shows that sustainable urbanism calls for the professionals in the field to acquire both disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge in order to play multiple roles in the process of responsive planning. A professional in the field of urbanism in general and in sustainable urbanism in particular, as Berke at al. have stated, should be “a facilitator (who) helps the community discover its vision and explores ways to achieve it, a technical analyst (who) provides good information, an innovator (who) offers creative alternatives and clarifies opportunities for change, and a consensus builder (who) ensures that the process of design is open and inclusive”.39

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Fig. 4 The inverted tetrahedra of sustainability and responsive planning

Of course, one could argue that the basis labelled as responsive planning and represented by the three planning modes is an elusive concept as there is continuous endevour to reach their working coexistence, but the initial shortcomings do not have to discourage us from seeking the balance between the three as basis for the practice of sustainable urbanism. Despite the ever increasing field of issues connected to sustainability, the standard approach to sustainable development in schools of architecture and urbanism still deals narrowly with topics of mixed-use, compact city form, multimodal traffic, connected green areas, re-use, etc. leaving out the broader picture and what is more, very often, using outdated approaches in dealing with these issues. Teaching sustainable urbanism should be related to making plans that guide change in order to shape the future, rather than to making plans that only accommodate change that has occurred. This process, as Barnett has stated, should look “more like a collage, inventing a few things, but mostly arranging and reordering elements already at hand.40 With this in mind, we will consider several important aspects relating to possible approaches in teaching sustainable urbanism.

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Ibid. p.51 Barnett, J. 2003. Redesigning places: Principles, practice and implementation, Chicago, American Planning Association, p.45

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4. APPROACHES IN TEACHING SUSTAINABLE URBANISM The condition of education in urbanism in the past decades can be compared, in many respects, to the condition of the fields of architecture and urbanism and their teaching in the second half of the last century, which Beatriz Colomina et al. in their Radical Pedagogies have described as ‘an unstable disciplinary edifice and an educational landscape under reconfiguration’.

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As in the middle of the last century, the present-day world has been going through a period of considerable transformations on all scales. If the post-WWII period was characterised by the Cold War, the space race, the utopian technological expectations and the rise of consumerism, the last decades have seen the fall of the Berlin wall and a new world order, the aftermath of the technological ‘advances’ and the search for alternative ways of consumption. Just as architecture and urbanism were uncertain of their identity in a transformed world at the time, so are they today in a time of even bigger disciplinary uncertainty brought by advances in the digital domain and the new consciousness of the natural capital. While the response to this situation in the early second half of the twentieth century was related to questioning of architecture’s sociopolitical values and its integration into a wider cultural milieu, the response of present-day architecture and urbanism to the contemporary uncertainty is still in a state of formation and search for adequate response.

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An important segment in that search, which is directly connected to the issues of teaching sustainable urbanism are the aspects of ethics and values as they are deeply embedded in the concept of sustainability and in any education of urbanism as planning should safeguard the public interest through the reconciliation of public and individual interests. As these aspects can easily be overshadowed by our own value-laden attitudes, it is important to make values explicit, especially in the formative years of professional education. ‘What is a sustainable city?’, ‘What is a healthy city?’, ‘What is a good city?’ are questions that should be constantly posed. A year ago an issue of OASE devoted to values in architecture asked the simple, yet difficult question ‘What is good architecture?’ and as the editors stated “simply because a question is certain to have an infinite number of answers does not mean it should not be asked”41 and questions like this should be asked in education in order to unveil the values that are hidden behind/within the answers.

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Teaching and learning strategies related to sustainability need to be associated with all levels of education. They would produce the biggest effect when present from the early years through the entire process of education of an individual. This relates to teacher education as well and encourages reconsidering of approaches applied in teaching at all levels. Within this context, the importance of the concept of unlearning must be emphasised, at least at this period in time when issues of sustainability have not become a common place in different levels of education. The acquired knowledge, or what we consider to be true, relates to our identity as individuals and as group members. With the individual it is represented by what could be labelled as mindset, while at the group level it evolves into a kind of common culture. Opening to critical inquiry is required in order to begin to learn how to unlearn and to separate from truths that have merged into our identity as individuals or groups. Thomas writes that “the theoretical and empirical legacy of unlearning does make a compelling case for the occurrence and importance of knowledge interference. Individuals are not blank slates and therefore existing knowledge does need to be addressed in order to facilitate the cognitive, affective and behavioral mechanisms associated with adopting a new practice”.42 As the concept and practice of sustainable urbanism by their nature differ from the traditional urban planning concepts and practice, the teaching of sustainable urbanism can be informed by the concept of unlearning as it is connected to cognitive challenges related to relinquishing outdated concepts and practices. The act of relinquishing outdated practices and understanding the mechanisms that are crucial for practice change are continuously obstructed by existing practices and habits. As Becker 41

What Is Good Architecture? 2013. OASE Journal for Architecture, NAI Publishers, no. 90 Thomas, N. 2001, Towards a new definition of unlearning: rethinking individual level unlearning and its implications for practice change, WP-11-01, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, p.25 https://weatherhead.case.edu/departments/organizational-behavior/workingPapers/WP-11-01.pdf

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states “scholars of unlearning seem to agree on two key points; that it is a process as opposed to a discrete event and it is closely coupled with the acquisition of new knowledge”.43 Thus, practice change at individual level requires knowledge acquisition, skill building and ability to interpret a number of cues from the environment. It is incorrect to consider unlearning to be the opposite of learning. Thomas states that “unlearning is redefined as a form of learning in which the individual engages in intentional evaluation of self, task and environment to determine that a change of practice is necessary and possible”.44 Related to teaching, this entire process requires a facilitator or a ‘combiner’ who would take the responsibility of creating conditions for learning/unlearning at individual and group level. Any approach to teaching of sustainable urbanism must take into consideration this process.

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There is already a rich legacy of approaches to teaching sustainable urbanism. Kotval45 notes that almost all of them confirm the community based nature of planning education for sustainable development, while van der Ryn and Cowan46 further develop the case for sustainable design. Berke 47 argues that objectives related to community visioning and revitalisation are addressed through experiential learning and community workshops. Experiential learning has been the core segment to education in urbanism in many schools as students are exposed to personal experience of concrete urban spaces and tasks related to them, from the formative years throughout the entire course of study. It results in a change of student attitude and knowledge as a consequence of the immediate personal experience. The major obstacle that an educator can face in this process has been already noted by Itin48 (1999) as reluctance on part of the students to fully take part in an educational process that involves their active engagement and participation, as they have not been exposed to such an experience in their previous education.

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This task could be supported by two other strategies, learning outside the classroom and community problem solving as they rest on a considerable amount of work done outside the classroom in a direct communication with different stakeholders. These two strategies provide conditions for first-hand experience in immediate communication, enquiry, value recognition and problem solving that are of utmost importance in education for sustainable urbanism. It is important to capitalise on similar experiences of other schools, to link similar exercises in different schools and regions and in different cultural settings in order to sensitise students to the variety of possible approaches and solutions.

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Similarly to the above two strategies, enquiry learning and future problem solving are crucial in any teaching and learning of sustainable urbanism if we are to shift education from training to enquiry and discovering. By the mere fact that enquiry learning includes analysis, problem definition and solving, as well as creative activities that lead to a number of possible problem solution, it is directly connected to the ability for a more systematic exercise of solving future problems. Carefully chosen case studies are the core element in demonstrating the strengths of both enquiry learning and the ability of problem solving as case studies lead to the understanding of contextual parameters that have physical, but also non-physical aspects connected to ideas, values and attitudes which should all be addressed, thus supplying a complex link between the problem, the context and the solution. Traditional ways of learning were based upon the idea that, initially, knowledge had to be delivered and accepted as information, theory and research results, before the learner can apply it in a scientifically based inquiry. As early as 1993, Zuber-Skeritt argued that “the learner at any level can 43

Becker, K.L. 2007. Unlearning in the workplace : a mixed methods study. PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology. http://eprints.qut.edu.at/16574/ 44 Thomas, N. op. cit., p.25 45 Kotval, Z. 2003. ‘Teaching Experiential Learning in the Urban Planning Curriculum”, Journal of Geography in Higher Education vol.27 no.3, Routledge 46 van der Ryn, S., Cowan, S. 1996. Ecological Design. Island Press. Washington DC. 47 Berke, P. 2002. “Does Sustainable Development Offer a New Direction for Planning? Challenges for the Twenty-First Century.” Journal of Planning Literature 17 (1): 21–36. 48 Itin, Christian M, 1999. ‘Reasserting the philosophy of experiential education as a vehicle for change in the 21st century’, The Journal of Experiential Education, Routledge, vol. 22, no. 2, pp.91-98.

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acquire knowledge through following a similar process of active search which specialist researchers undergo, rather than being taught and passively absorbing the results of research found by specialists”.49 As sustainable urbanism must primarily be action oriented, the above mentioned strategies, if applied in teaching of sustainable urbanism, would lead to what Zuber-Skeritt labels action learning and action research which themselves arise from and lead to action, integrating ‘research and action, theory and practice’. In his words this “aims at advancing knowledge as well as improving practice in higher education by developing people as professionals and “personal scientists” and organisations as “learning organisations”.50

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In the last decades the application of these approaches in teaching sustainable urbanism apart from ‘internal’ obstacles has been also hampered by the wider academic context in which schools of architecture and urbanism have been struggling to establish research by design as research in its own right with its own research procedures that differ from pure scientific research in order to have the specifics of research in their own discipline recognised by the wider academic community. The position of schools of architecture and urbanism in a research university has often been either questioned or unclear. The debate resulting from this situation has often pushed schools into curriculum changes that have supposedly moved them closer to a scientific environment at the account of the professional expertise. These changes have resulted not only from the general discussion about the role of a professional school in a scientific university setting, but also from the appearance of new issues that occupy the interest of a number of different fields of expertise. Indeed, one such case is the issue of sustainability that has been the recent ‘battlefield’ of several disciplines to claim their supremacy over the issue within a university context. Sustainable urbanism has become an area where aspirations of several disciplines overlap.

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As Foqué rightfully noted “professional disciplines are the connectors between basic science and the real world and between theoretical concepts and practical applications. They reduce the gap between the real world problems and academic research”.51 He argues that professional disciplines should develop their own bodies of knowledge and methodological frameworks in order to confront other disciplines within a transdisciplinary context. This is exactly what schools of architecture and urbanism must do with the broad area of sustainability and its repercussions in architecture and urbanism and consequently in the process of their teaching.

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The issues of effective connection of theory and application and education and professional practice are of primary importance in teaching sustainable urbanism. Discussing the integration of sustainability in planning and design programs in higher education, Pijawka et al.52 argue that ‘sustainability topics, concepts and problems are conducive as subjects for project-based, experiential learning studios, project-based courses or workshops’ and they call ‘for the employment of a variety of pedagogical approaches for teaching sustainability in planning and design classrooms to address different learning and teaching styles’. The need for a variety of pedagogical approaches is related both to the character of topics and the level of education at which they are introduced. Student-centred teaching has long tradition in schools of architecture and urbanism where problem-based, case-based and project-based learning have been implemented in different learning environments. They provide the necessary bridge to application and professional practice and allow different forms of inquiry to be tested, which is crucial in shaping the approaches to teaching sustainable urbanism.

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Zuber-Skeritt, Ortrun, 1993. ‘Improving Learning and Teaching Through Action Learning and Action Research, Higher education Research and Development, vol. 12, no.1 pp. 45-46 50 Ibid. p.56 51 Foqué Richard, 2010. Building Knowledge in Architecture, Brussels: UPA, p.25 52 Pijawka, D. et al. 2013, Integration of sustainability in planning and design programs in higher education: evaluating learning outcomes, Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, vol.6 no.1, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17549175.2013.763623

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4.1 Problem-based learning in teaching sustainable urbanism Problem-based learning consists of carefully chosen problems that require from students to use problem solving techniques, self-directed learning strategies, team participation skills, and to apply disciplinary knowledge to real-world situations. In problem based learning students are faced with a real-world problem similar to those they would face in their professional practice. Problem based learning intends to encourage students to develop their own problem-solving skills, rather than to be told how to solve the problem. Exploring the connection of sustainable development and problem based learning Steinemann53 argues that there are five benefits resulting from it: applicability, problem solving skills, active learning, motivation, and professional skills. She also states that posed problems should be complex and open ended, challenging higher-order thinking, creativity, and synthesis of knowledge. These benefits are a direct consequence of the solving of real-world problems, which has a direct bearing on applicability as acquired knowledge becomes more accessible and applicable. She writes that “typically, students become proficient in solving narrowly defined textbook problems, but have relatively little experience in solving ill-structured, open-ended problems—the type often faced in practice. This is especially true with sustainability problems, which require flexible, integrative, multidisciplinary problem-solving approaches, rather than singular solutions. In addition, students learn that problem solving is often more than the product of an intellectual exercise. Problem solving requires implementation, and good solutions may nonetheless face barriers to implementation. Through PBL, students can acquire additional skills, often social and political skills, necessary to implement solutions. (…)In addition, PBL problems should enable students to confront issues of implementation, and to work directly with decision makers, advisors, stakeholders, and the public. ”.54 Since in problem based learning students are the ones who determine what information and analyses are relevant for the solution of a problem, they are forced into active learning which will help them in the long run, preparing them for life-long learning, as knowledge becomes outdated and in their professional lives they would need to acquire new knowledge by themselves. Dealing with real-world problems that have social relevance and often consequences tends to be a motivational force that helps the entire process of learning. By simulating a practice environment, problem based learning forces students to work both individually and within a group, a valuable experience for their professional skills.

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4.2 The role of case studies in teaching sustainable urbanism Foqué argues that in cases such is sustainable urbanism which deals with complex and multidisciplinary issues “best solutions cannot be derived through mere application of current theories and/or methods. More and more professionals are confronted with questions for which the answer lies between disciplines and for which no clear-cut theoretical framework accommodates a solution strategy”.55 As a strong supporter of case study research and case-based learning he sees them as ‘extremely powerful tools to train students and professionals to tackle problems that are pragmatically demanding, based on creative and critical thinking, deliberating capacity and the ability to handle , within limited time frames, incomplete information and fuzzy contexts”.56 Case study learning usually represents guided inquiry, as opposed to problem based and project based learning which tend to be open end inquiries. This difference opens the opportunity for choosing the most appropriate approach to teaching sustainable urbanism depending on the level of education and the complexity of issues. In many professions case studies have become a major tool for research and education. There is no reason why this would not be the case with sustainable urbanism, where the study of cases should provide conditions for a sound knowledge base on one hand, and on the other an insight into how professional attitudes contribute to the shaping of solutions. Furthermore, the case study research in

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Steinemann, A. 2003. Implementing Sustainable Development through Problem-Based Learning: Pedagogy and Practice. Journal of professional issues in engineering education and practice. vol.129, no.4. pp.216-224 54 Ibid. p. 218 55 Foqué Richard, op.cit., p.156 56 Ibid, p.157

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sustainable urbanism should establish a competitive knowledge base which would provide the discipline with a better starting point in the ever increasing debate in issues of sustainability.

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Other professional disciplines have gone through this process and have established their knowledge base by conducting case study research in a rigorous methodological way. Writing on the positive experience of Harvard, Garvin mentions the cases of the schools of business, law and medicine, commending the latest developments in each of the schools. “For years, the ‘technology’ of cases remained static. They were written documents consisting of text, tables and illustrations. Today, however, information and communication technologies are transforming cases (…) in ways that produce greater realism, engagement, and interaction”.57 This could certainly be a path that sustainable urbanism can follow in order to establish its disciplinary knowledge base. What is more case studies play a crucial role in bridging the restrictions of culture, social conformity and received wisdom necessary for relinquishing outdated concepts and practices.

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4.3 Re-planning in project-based learning as a tool in teaching sustainable urbanism Constantinos Doxiadis once wrote that urban planning is like a two-headed eagle, simultaneously looking towards the past and the future. He thought that the past is the only laboratory we possess in urbanism. Re-planning as an approach is known in urbanism. In the book ‘Responsive environments’, Bentley at al. omitted a block in order to show the forces that should be taken into consideration when designing for a site where external forces decisively influence the urban design decisions. Other cases include re-planning of an area for which an official plan has been adopted in order to locate and highlight the ‘possibilities lost’ or re-planning of a consolidated city area where the exercise of replanning aims at improving the current conditions by a variety of interventions of different scale and scope, etc.

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Re-planning is a special case of project-based learning. As in other cases of project-based learning, according to Larmer and Mergendoller, it requires critical thinking, various forms of collaboration and of communication skills, problem solving skills, relies on feedback and revision and results in public presentation. incorporating feedback and revision.

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The re-planning exercise which is most suited to the teaching of sustainable urbanism could be labelled as ‘back to the future’ case. In all cities there are big areas that have been planned and built in a fairly short period of time, mostly housing areas from the sixties or the seventies of the last century. From the initial stage of planning these areas have reached different levels of completion, and have undergone a number of planned or ad-hoc changes. The ‘back to the future’ re-planning exercise should begin with a thorough survey and analysis of the existing state of the area, but also with a complete analysis of the initial planning brief. Then, an analysis of the development stages and the reasons for noticed changes should follow. An accompanying part of the study must be an opinion survey of the local inhabitants. Through these stages the learners/researchers would acquire a rather precise picture of the process that has led to the present day condition. In this project-based teaching situation, the following stage would be the ‘travel through time’ a stage in which learners would be asked to plan the same area, but this time taking into account the principles of sustainable urbanism. This approach has earlier raised a number of questions about the ‘survey in vain’, the irrelevance of beginning ‘from scratch’ in an already built area and similar critique. However, we believe that the advantages outnumber the downfalls of this approach. We will mention only few: the learners get a first-hand experience of an existing space with its advantages and disadvantages; they draw on this experience in the next stages of their work; by exploring the ‘history’ of the site they acquire knowledge of the forces and circumstances that shape the city, etc. However, the biggest advantage lies in the possibility for them to compare the consequences of different approaches and the benefits that application of the principles of sustainable urbanism can provide.

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5. CONCLUSION With the appearing of the notion of sustainability schools of architecture and urbanism have once again been exposed to a situation already known to them from earlier periods. It is the situation in which because of the multidisciplinary nature of the new issue that needs to be covered, schools find themselves with the split personality syndrome. As Schön58 has put it, they are caught between the prevailing idea of rigorous knowledge, based on technical rationality and the awareness of indeterminate zones of practice that lie beyond its canons. It is the usual case with professional schools which often struggle with “the difference between the use of scientific theory in practice and the creation of new knowledge through practice”. The proposed conceptual framework of sustainable urbanism, represented by the inverted tetrahedra model and the tripartite composition of responsive planning should assist in comprehending and coordinating different actions related to social, economic, cultural, environmental and urban topics; in integrating urban space policies and projects into general urban strategies and in establishing a comprehensive and transparent inclusion of all relevant actors in the process. We have tried to illustrate how schools and the discipline of urbanism should position themselves in teaching sustainability issues. We have proposed that teaching sustainable urbanism should rely on a number of teaching strategies that are generally used such as unlearning, experiential learning, learning outside the classroom and community problem solving, enquiry learning etc., but also on approaches that are highly discipline relevant and discipline sensitive such as problem-based, casebased and project-based learning. Only combination of these approaches can be the proper response to the demanding task of teaching sustainable urbanism. Building a sound base of teaching sustainable urbanism would help the discipline position itself strongly in the ever growing arena of interest in sustainability and respond to the two significant endevours which Pijawka et al. define as “how to incorporate sustainability into planning and design programs, and the reverse, how planning and design can be an integral part of sustainability courses”.59 The future challenges will present themselves as a quest for more integrated modes of action in many topics of urban development, despite the decrease in financial resources, while integrated district development will present itself as the basis for sustainable urban development. This will call for a more explicit area-based approach, but also for a more intensive experience exchange. In this quest the proposed approaches in teaching and learning could provide a sound base for e new generation of learners who would be prepared to guide change in order to shape the future of our cities, rather than only to accommodate change that has occurred.

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Schön, Donald.A. 1995. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, Ashgate, Farnham. Pijawka, D. et al. op.cit. p.32

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References: Aalborg Charter, 1994. http://ec.europa.eu/environment/urban/pdf/aalborg_charter.pdf. Barnett. J, 2003. Redesigning places: Principles, practice and implementation, Chicago American Planning Association, p.45

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Becker, K.L. 2007. Unlearning in the workplace : a mixed methods study. PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology. http://eprints.qut.edu.at/16574/

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Berke, P. 2002. “Does Sustainable Development Offer a New Direction for Planning? Challenges for the Twenty-First Century.” Journal of Planning Literature, vol. 17, no.1, pp. 21–36. Berke P.R. et al. 2006. Urban Land Use Planning, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago.

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Campbell, Scott 1996, Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities?: Urban Planning and the Contradictions of Sustainable Development, Journal of the American Planning Association, vol.62, no.3, pp.296-313.

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Copenhagen Agenda for Sustainable Cities, 2007. http://www.dac.dk/en/dac-cities/sustainable-cities/historicmilestones/2007--copenhagen-agenda-working-for-sustainable-cities/ Dimitrova, E. 2014. The ‘sustainable development’ concept in urban planning education: lessons learned on a Bulgarian path, Journal of Cleaner Production 62, http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

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Garvin, Donald A. 2003. Making the Case: Professional education for the world of practice, Harvard Magazine, vol.106, no.1, p.62

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Godschalk, David R. 2004, Land Use Planning Challenges: Coping with Conflicts in Visions of Sustainable Development and Livable Communities, Journal of the American Planning Association, vol.70, no.1, pp.5-13. Havik, Klaske and Veldhuisen, Sebastiaan, 2009, ‘Terristoties: Site Specific Research and Design’, OASE Journal for Architecture, no. 80; pp.70-76 Itin, Christian M, 1999. ‘Reasserting the philosophy of experiential education as a vehicle for change in the 21st century’, The Journal of Experiential Education, Routledge, vol. 22, no. 2, pp.91-98.

Kotval, Z. 2003. ‘Teaching Experiential Learning in the Urban Planning Curriculum’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education vol.27 no.3, Routledge Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities, 2007. Informal Ministerial Meeting on Urban Development and Territorial Cohesion. http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/archive/themes/urban/leipzig_charter.pdf Ling C. et al. 2006. What Makes a City Livable? http://crcresearch.org/case-studies/case-studies-sustainableinfrastructure/land-use-planning/what-makes-a-city-liveable Marseille Statement.Final Statement by the ministers in charge of urban development.Marseille, 25.11.2008. http://www.eib.org/attachments/jessica_marseille_statement_en.pdf

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Open Working Group proposal for Sustainable Development Goals, http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/focussdgs.html Pijawka, D. et al. 2013, Integration of sustainability in planning and design programs in higher education: evaluating learning outcomes, Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, vol.6 no.1, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17549175.2013.763623 Schön, Donald.A. 1995. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, Ashgate, Farnham.

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Thomas, N. 2001, Towards a new definition of unlearning: rethinking individual level unlearning and its implications for practice change, WP-11-01, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland https://weatherhead.case.edu/departments/organizational-behavior/workingPapers/WP-11-01.pdf

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Toledo Declaration, 2010. Informal Ministerial Meeting on Urban Development.Toledo, 22 June, http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/archive/newsroom/pdf/201006_toledo_declaration_en.pdf

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What Is Good Architecture? 2013. OASE Journal for Architecture, NAI Publishers, no. 90

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Zuber-Skeritt, Ortrun, 1993, ‘Improving Learning and Teaching Through Action Learning and Action Research, Higher education Research and Development, vol. 12, no.1 pp. 45-46 5 Years after the Leipzig Charter – Integrated Urban Development as a Prerequisite for a Sustainable City http://www.hallbarastader.gov.se/Bazment/Alias/Files/?5yearsliepziegcharter 46th Congress ISOCARP, Sustainable City Developing World, 19-23 Sep. 2010, Nairobi, Kenya

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http://old.isocarp.org/index.php?id=659

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Captions:

Fig. 1 The sustainability triangle according to Scott Campbell

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Fig. 4 The inverted tetrahedra of sustainability and responsive planning

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Fig. 3 The triangle of responsive planning (after Philip R. Berke et al.)

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Fig. 2 The sustainability ‘prism’ according to David R. Godschalk

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