Toward Resilient Cities and Landscapes

This course explores urban design and planning practice through the lens of resilience. It focuses on emerging approaches and strategies to climate adaptation in the built environment, and integrating ecological imperatives and social justice into next century forms of infrastructure. The UD Seminar and Planning practicum shares learning objectives, guest lectures, and a field trip; but the course has separate instructors, assignments, and evaluation. A shared central learning objective is to develop an understanding workshops as an essential tool for design and planning. Students help to design and implement a public workshop that explores the possibilities of social, environmental, and economic transformation that could follow a coordinated national infrastructure program such as those being proposed today as a Green New Deal. Participants travel to a small town in Western Pennsylvania to conduct this workshop, developing techniques to engage a broad set of stakeholders in complex and sometimes divisive conversation.