Cities and Urban Systems
Learn how to examine the interface of the engineered, natural, and social environments. Employ case studies to dive into the challenges associated with rapid urbanization occurring around the globe, and the strategies used to create healthy human ecosystems and livable communities in which to live, work, and play.
Takeaways
- Understand how urban systems are related to natural resource sustainability and resilience.
- Evaluate, map, and explain connections between engineered, natural, and urban systems.
- Compare infrastructure policies, processes, interventions, and innovations and evaluate infrastructure plans for resiliency.
- Plan for engagement of stakeholders in infrastructure planning efforts.
- Analyze connections of regional landscapes to urban water systems.
- Apply water system hydrology concepts and best practices to global rapid urbanization and emergency management challenges.
- Prescribe best practices to address contemporary water, green infrastructure, and emergency management problems in rapidly urbanizing places.
- Identify strategies for managing wildlife conflict and promoting and conserving wildlife in urban areas.
Courses
Ranging from site-scale strategies, such as green roofs for managing stormwater, to regional networks of riparian corridors, infrastructure planning and design offers opportunities and challenges for planners, policy and decision makers, scientists and researchers, landowners, and taxpayers across the urban–rural gradient. This course explores the broader contexts which have given rise to green infrastructure planning and design, both in the U.S. and internationally; identifies and examines different critical scales for conceptualizing green infrastructure and practical strategies being employed at each scale; and compares policy goals and programs supporting green infrastructure in the U.S.
Approximately 50% of the world’s people are now classified as urban, and they are motivated by a desire to create healthy human ecosystems and sustainability communities in which to live, work, and play. Are cities sustainable environments? What are civic stakeholders, local communities, and global society doing to ensure that urban and urbanizing landscapes are healthy and desirable places to live?
Water is the lifeblood of cities. Freshwater, wastewater, and environmental water systems each provide vital services, and each can cause profound problems. Citizens and industry require freshwater to live and function. Without adequate wastewater management cities quickly become unhealthy, fetid places. Imbalances in environmental water can cause degradation, drought, and fire or, conversely, catastrophic flooding. This course examines urban water systems as an integrated management challenge. Case studies drawn from cities in North American and global regions experiencing rapid urbanization are used to identify emerging problems and prescribe best practices.
Eight out of ten Americans now live in cities or towns of 50,000 people or more, and 50% of the world’s human population now lives in urban areas. While it’s a common assumption that cities are inhospitable to non-human animal life, we have ample evidence to indicate that not only do some wildlife species survive in urban areas— they can thrive. One positive outcome is that people can directly enjoy and appreciate wildlife close to home, adding to their quality of life and connection to the natural world. A negative consequence is that conflicts between people and wildlife are on the rise. Urbanization has created new challenges for a variety of natural resource professionals, and most have little or no special training in this area. This course is organized into five learning units: urban landscapes, urban ecosystems, urban habitats and hazards, sociopolitical issues, and special management considerations.