HANK03191U MACA Specialization - CANCELLED Specialization/MA-elective, Urban sustainability in a Circular Economy Perspective CANCELLED

Volume 2014/2015
Content
By 2008, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities and by 2030 it is expected that more than 5 billion people live in urban settings. Changing the cities in a more sustainable direction is not an easy task, among other things, because it is costly to change existing structures. An important part of developing cities in a more sustainable direction is to secure a better resource utilization based on circular economy principles by (re-)designing the urban systems handling the flows of citizens, i.e. transportation of citizens, goods and materials and services within and to and from the metropolis in new ways. These flows can be separated into two main cycles, the technical cycle and the biological cycle. Concerning the former the scarcity of precious metals and chemical elements or substances is becoming more and more pronounced. This underlines the importance of handling this flow as a resource and securing that each component and substance can be separated at the end of the product life-cycle. The biological cycle primarily consists of food to the inhabitants, yet in Demark only a minor proportion of the food waste from households are recycled and composted. All these flows generate transportation within and to and from the city. All the described systems are characterized with strong systemic interdependencies and multiple stakeholders that handle these systems. I line with this, knowledge and appropriation of technology is always embedded in local systems and implementation of sustainable solutions, understanding the nature of various contextualizing processes is of great importance. By adding cultural analysis and ethnographic methodology to theories on innovation and design processes the course aims at embracing sustainability not only in its potentiality (as possible technical solutions) but as possible implemented functionality, and understanding the context in which this functionality is provided.
The challenges facing businesses and the public sector to develop and market green innovations in the area of urban metabolism and cradle-to-cradle design are formidable. A wide range of subjects contribute valuable insights on these challenges. Without effective multi-stakeholder collaboration that involves, for instance, suppliers, public sector, business partners, employees, users / citizens and investors, progress is likely to be severely compromised. This course focuses on two areas of collaboration that to date have been largely overlooked despite their importance for green innovation – network collaboration of businesses with the public sector, e.g. public-private partnerships and network collaboration of businesses with users or consumers and the public sector with citizens. Today the public sector shapes the conditions under which many green innovation initiatives unfold through, for example, policies affecting taxation, pricing and procurement. Incentive structures for reducing energy and natural resource consumption are often relatively weak or totally absent. New solutions that require changes in functionality may require large investments and, as a consequence, it is important to unleash the creative potential of multi-stakeholder public-private partnerships by involving them in the design and implementation of new solutions.
In the course the students will work with case topics that are relevant to the study of urban sustainability and circular economy. Examples of such topics in an urban context is a) food waste b) analysis of and scenarios for the flow of citizens, goods and services c) waste handling, source separation and life-cycle analysis. These topics and the course in general is developed in collaboration with Copenhagen University, Science , Ethnology, Copenhagen University, Science and Technical University of Denmark
The academic world has only recently begun to study how innovation in the field of urban sustainability and circular economyfrom a multi-stakeholder public-private perspective. Consequently, the course will have to borrow theories from a number of other disciplines, e.g., organization, multi-stakeholder analysis , cultural analysis, public-private partnerships, innovation, etc.
Key business topics include the following related to urban sustainability and circular economy:
  • The role of business and public sector (process) innovations
  • The role of multi-stakeholder networks supporting these innovations
  • Public-private partnerships related to organizing, managing or implementing innovative projects
  • Entreprenuership & Innovation
  • Market Creation
  • Life cycle assessment and cradle-to-cradle design
  • Appropriation and implementation of technology
Learning Outcome
The course aims to provide students with an opportunity to gain practical hands‐on experience with real‐world urban metabolism and cradle-to-cradle innovation projects and processes in the context of multi-stakeholder public-private collaboration, and reflect academically on the selected topics and processes and issues relating to working in a cross-disciplinary context. To be awarded the highest mark (12), the student, with no or just a few insignificant shortcomings, must fulfill the following learning objectives:
  • To be able to apply relevant models, concepts and theories from the curriculum to the selected projects
  • To identify and analyze the relationships between these models, concepts and theories mutually and in relation to the selected projects
  • To assess critically the value of these models, concepts and theories for developing green innovations in relation to the selected projects.
  • To be able to reflect on how different scientific fields represented in curriculum contribute to the overall course topic and how the students own scientific field relate to other scientific fields activated in the processes of the course, i.e. reflect on potential synergy from cross-disciplinarity
A basic knowledge and understanding of innovation, entrepreneurship, marketing, organization, management and sustainability is a good preparation for this course.
The intention is that students work in teams on project themes or cases developed in collaboration with core public and / or business stakeholders. These will also be involved as experts in the course. Presentation of the solutions developed by the student teams to relevant stakeholders is a central element of the course. This is guided by general and project specific lectures.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Class Instruction
  • 0
  • Total
  • 0
Credit
15 ECTS
Type of assessment
Written assignment
Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
External censorship
Criteria for exam assesment