Sustainability has become perhaps the most pressing scientific and social challenge of our time. Typically defined as utilizing natural resources so as to create a high quality of life for future as well as current generations, the idea of sustainability has been strongly contested since its introduction to popular discourse in the 1980s. Nonetheless, global climate change, habitat loss and biodiversity loss, desertification and deforestation, and the effects of rapid urbanization have fueled political debates over sustainability policies in both the industrialized and industrializing countries and regions.
In this course, you will gain an understanding of how key global challenges, such as population growth and consumption, are creating a sense of urgency in terms of developing and promoting theories, methods, and practices that foster sustainability in our society. Through a concentrated study of this emerging sphere we call sustainability, you will learn to articulate the relationships among observed phenomena, the principles and policies those observations can
inform, particularly how best to integrate technology, education, and policy to best meet identified goals. Finally, you will gain an appreciation for why interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability are often necessary and useful.
The course is divided into four interdependent sections or modules: 1. Concepts and Contexts for Sustainability; 2. Challenges of a Planet; 3. Global Economy and the Search for Solutions; and 4. Social Activism and Change Agents. In addition to the two weekly lectures and the discussion sections, which students are expected to attend, the course has an experiential component consisting of field trips and in-class exercises.

As engines of capital accumulation, cities have often been viewed as environmental sacrifice zones. Some critics have argued that ‘sustainable cities’ is an oxymoron. Nonetheless, the debate over sustainable development generally, and sustainable urbanism specifically, has succeeded in reshaping and broadening discourse around cities and attendant policies and outcomes – both in industrialized and industrializing countries. Implying that sustainable use of natural resources involves social justice and economic development as well as environmental concerns, the notion of sustainability has led away from narrower conceptions of urban environmentalism, toward more consideration for the future, greater integration of social and economic goals with environmental and ecological objectives, and hence a fundamental rethinking of how cities should be theorized, planned and managed.
This course introduces graduate students to the emerging field of urban sustainability from multiple disciplinary perspectives, primarily industrial ecology, urban political ecology, urban ecology, and planning. The course provides students with the theoretical and methodological tools in which to explore the potential for a sustainable urbanism. Approaches to foster more sustainable and resilient forms of urbanization and urban life – ranging from localization, to industrial symbiosis, to ecological restoration – will be introduced and evaluated. Course deliverables include a midterm exam, a group case-project, a material flow analysis project, and a final exam. Meetings with stakeholders and other actors who shape the city form additional course components.