ShareProcesses of urban planning, design, transition and management are highly complex and laden with compound uncertainties. NMP SUT provides integrated knowledge development and capacity building to young professionals in the field sustainable urban transitions. This is achieved through inter-/transdisciplinary competence building developing capacities to
a) understand principles of human settlements,
b) engage in new and shared knowledge production and problem-solving and
c) develop improved practices contributing to positive urban change.
The programme thus offers one of the most comprehensive and relevant master programmes in the urban development topic area. The focus of NMP SUT is on sustainable urban development, but within different fields of application at the five participating universities:
- Aalto – Human-oriented living environments – combining the creative disciplines of architecture, design, media, and the arts
- Chalmers – Local socio-spatial dynamics and citizen involvement in sustainable urban and neighbourhood transitions
- DTU ‐ Planning, innovation and management of the built environment – in a socio-technical perspective
- KTH – Collaborative city networks and multi-scalar governance for sustainable urban and regional development
- NTNU – Towards sustainable livelihoods, land-use and urban infrastructure through formal and informal planning processes at local and city levels
Together, these different fields of application forms a new joint subject area: planning and design for Sustainable Urban Transitions, where systems thinking, participative and scenario approaches, risk reduction, research by design and generative planning are key concepts. Within this subject area, the aims of the programme are to:
- Provide opportunities for joint learning and understanding of urban planning, design and management as highly complex transition processes, laden with both short-term and long-term uncertainties.
- Support integrated learning and capacity building targeting the variety of involved professionals.
- Show how sociotechnical systems theory, participative and scenario approaches, area-based planning and practice-based research are key concepts in sustainable urban transitions.
- Provide opportunities for learning in different contexts (North and South) and fields of application at the five participating universities, exploiting the strong complementary specialties of the N5T partners to foster highly qualified candidates for public administration, industry and research within sustainable urban transitions.
The programme is active at four different levels of urban transitions: individual inhabitants/users, neighbourhoods, infrastructural systems, and urban regions. These levels are represented by the programme’s five study tracks and the learning outcomes differ depending on study track. Details of the programmes learning outcomes is to be found in the study track descriptions.