PINS9510 Site-specific Governance and Co-creation Course description

This course will address sustainability from a regional and regional, urban and rural site-specific context. The focus will be on interdisciplinarity and co-creation in cities and regions. Co-creation integrates the interests of citizens and other stakeholders with innovative experiences in urban and regional settings such as city centres, neighbourhoods learning arenas, and local business clusters. The course will introduce candidates to the perspectives for critical analysing the roles these societal practices and processes have in achieving new ways of creating sustainable societies. Through socio- cultural innovation a ‘sense of place’ will be promoted by defining key performance indicators based on the salutogenic concepts of comprehensibility, meaningfulness, and manageability. Universal design is needed for including as many citizens as possible: In order to ensure participation from citizens, all digital tools facing general public should have good usability and accessibility. It means that the interfaces of these tools should be usable, efficient, and accessible despite of age, abilities, background, social or economic status. This connects to biological, material, and psychosocial factors that make it easier for people to perceive their life as coherent, structured, and understandable. The syllabus may be abbreviated and adapted to fit the interest of the participants of the course in cooperation with the supervisors.

The course will address the following, non-exclusive themes:

• • Smart cities
  • E- Participation and citizen science
  • Empowerment
  • Digitalization, materiality, and materials
  • The interplay between placemaking, place attachment and co-creation

Active participation in the seminars is necessary to adequately understand the course material and themes. Participation is therefore mandatory, and candidates are expected to attend all days of teaching and required to attend at least 80 percent of teaching days. In special cases of documented illness, the course leader may accept exceptions to this requirement. In these cases, lack of participation can be substituted with alternative arrangements such as active reading of the relevant syllabus literature. Course requirements are assessed as confirmed or not confirmed. The course requirement must be completed and confirmed within the given deadline in order to have the right to submit a final essay.

The course requirements are:

• A plenary presentation on a subject decided in collaboration with the course lecturer.
• A prepared opposition to at least one other presentation.
• 80 % attendance is required. 

Completed Master’s degree (120 ECTS credits) or equivalent education level.

Learning outcomes

Upon completing the course, the candidates are expected to have gained the following learning outcomes.

Knowledge

The candidate:

• has advanced knowledge about risk, trust, and co-operative attitudes
• knows the complex relationships of smart cities and environments
• is in the research forefront of profession specific participation and empowerment
• understands how identity is related to a sense of place
• is familiar with land ownership and land use development.

Skills

The candidate:

• can enable solutions through digitalization, materiality, and materials
• can promote digital accessibility and universal design
• can Integrate past, present, and future values in spatial planning

General competence

The candidate:

• can contribute to urban and rural redevelopment
• integrates citizen science in environmental planning

Lectures, group work, individual work, seminar, workshops. Individual approaches in accordance with the candidate’s core competence and project.

Active participation in the seminars is necessary to adequately understand the course material and themes. Participation is therefore mandatory, and candidates are expected to attend all days of teaching and required to attend at least 80 percent of teaching days. In special cases of documented illness, the course leader may accept exceptions to this requirement. In these cases, lack of participation can be substituted with alternative arrangements such as active reading of the relevant syllabus literature. Course requirements are assessed as confirmed or not confirmed. The course requirement must be completed and confirmed within the given deadline in order to have the right to submit a final essay.

The course requirements are:

• A plenary presentation on a subject decided in collaboration with the course lecturer.
• A prepared opposition to at least one other presentation.
• 80 % attendance is required. 

The course will address sustainability from a societal perspective. Societal institutions, technical infrastructures, and culture constitute frames within which practices evolve. The course will provide the candidates with perspectives for critically analysing the role these societal frames have in inhibiting and enabling a transition towards sustainability, and for engaging in constructive discussions of how sustainable practices can be facilitated at a societal level. Cases will be used to stimulate interdisciplinary investigation of these issues. The syllabus may be abbreviated and adapted to fit the interest of the participants of the course in cooperation with the supervisors.

The course will address the following, non-exclusive list of themes:

• • Predominant economic systems and alternatives, including circular economy
  • Human-centric world views and alternatives, including more-than-human perspectives
  • The cultural and political properties of technological systems and their role in societal exclusion and inclusion
  • The interplay between algorithms and social practices

Completed Master’s degree (120 ECTS credits) or equivalent education level.

Upon completing the course, the candidates are expected to have gained the following learning outcomes (knowledge, skills, and general competence).

Knowledge

The candidate:

• is in the forefront of knowledge for analysing how societal institutions, forms or organization, and infrastructures influence practices
• can contribute to the development of new methods in their own profession in the development of social structures

Skills

The candidate:

• can formulate problems, plan and carry out research about institutions, infrastructures and forms of organizations seen from the perspectives of specific professions
• can engage in discussions of how sustainable practices can be facilitated at an institutional, organizational and infrastructural level
• can challenge established knowledge in the field and identify critical success factors for sustainable transformation

General competence

The candidate.

• has an advanced understanding of own profession in societal structures and interdisciplinary relationships between micro, meso and macro levels in society
• can contribute to governance recommendations for white papers and policy briefs
• can assess the need for, initiate and practice innovation

Lectures, workshops, seminars.

Confirmed participation in the course and accepted final essay.

• Individual essay (4000-5000 words). The essay will discuss the most important theoretical aspects from the syllabus, with relevance for the candidate’s PhD project. Cover page, illustrations, and list of references come in addition.