The challenges of urbanization in the Anthropocene correspond both to new fields of research and to new frontiers in training in order to foster a change in the theory, methodologies and practices of urban geography, planning, landscaping, etc.
Scientific research from different disciplinary backgrounds proves that human beings are capable of triggering reactions in bio-physical systems which lead to a critical evolution of the environment and a questioning of the habitability of the earth. What scholars propose to call the Anthropocene is therefore the era in the history of the anthropization of the Earth, where human beings become a force acting irreversibly on the entire planet (Steffen et al., 2011). We therefore observe the upheavals of what geographers call the ecumene, i.e. the space inhabited by human beings. This space is increasingly urban in its nature, regardless of the places it produces. This leads to a real “planetary urbanization”, observed since the 1950s, which is the vector for the acceleration of the entry into the Anthropocene (Brenner, Schmid, 2015), facing an impressive challenge engaging human and non-human agents, pushing to the creation of the concept of “Urbanocene” by geographer Michel Lussault (2013; 2017).
The session invites to reflect on the links between urbanization and Anthropocene, focusing on the need of adopting co-creative methodologies in urban design and planning and on teaching methodologies able to face these complex urban challenges among younger generations. This is the case of Challenge Based Learning (CBL), a teaching methodology focusing on relevant real-life authentic challenges to trigger learning and combining the offer of hard and soft skills, responding to specific needs coming directly from society (Van den Beemt et al., 2022). This is made possible through the adoption of a student-oriented approach within collaborative learning techniques (Barkley et al., 2004) and citizen science (Vohland et al. 2021), where students become the main protagonists of a multi-disciplinary teaching, together with academics and local stakeholders (van Karnenbeeka, Janssen-Jansenb, Peel, 2022).
The session invites scholars, at a doctoral and senior level, to discuss about the importance of multilevel co-creative planning and CBL methods around different topics and scales of application. The session is organized by Federica Burini (University of Bergamo, Italy), together with Marco Picone (University of Palermo, Italy). The organizers would like to invite two key-note speakers who could introduce the session – Michel Lussault (Ecole Urbaine de Lyon) and Christian Schmid (ETH Zurich) – in order to open the session to researchers presenting a variety of approaches in co-creative planning and to analyze different methodologies connected to Challenge Based Learning at different scales for planning sustainable urbanities. After the conference, selected papers will be proposed for a collective publication.
Federica Burini (1); Marco Picone (2)
(1) University of Bergamo, Italy, (2) University of Palermo, Italy
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