Working on real-world projects
Those enrolled in the summer school, which is open to graduate and post-graduate students as well as professionals across Canada, will have a choice of three urban renewal projects: the C40 Reinventing Cities challenge south of the Lachine Canal in Montreal’s South-West borough, the Centreville District Community site in Nova Scotia and a municipal-scale project in Baie-Saint-Paul in Quebec’s Charlevoix region.
"The course and the projects in it are intended to help change the way participants think about city planning — using systemic, collaborative and anticipatory methods," Cucuzzella says.
Unlike Eicker, she came to the Next-Generation Cities Institute with a background in design and computational arts, focusing on issues of collaborative design and interactive art-architecture in public urban spaces.
But combining talents from different specializations in pursuit of a common goal is what cross-disciplinary work — and in this case, the long-term transformation of cities — is all about.
"It's through this collective and strategic discussion amongst various stakeholders that a systemic understanding of the urban project can take place," Cucuzzella adds.
"Once this is reached so is the sustainable, human-centred and equitable solution to the city."
Register by April 28 for the inaugural CIRODD Summer School featuring curricular contributions from Concordia’s Next-Generation Cities Institute.