Postgraduate Course: Evaluating Sustainable Lands and Cities (EFIE11550)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | *Programme Core Course: Sustainable Lands and Cities (MSc)*
Please Note:
This course is only available to students enrolled on the Sustainable Lands and Cities (MSc) degree programme.
Nowadays, lands and cities are facing unprecedented challenges to tackle climate change and promote sustainable development. In the era of information technologies, big data coming from a wide variety of sources promise to expand our understanding of urban and spatial dynamics. This course introduces students to geographic data science approaches to evaluate lands and cities in terms of their sustainability. |
| Course description |
The UN Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda 2030 set the objectives for more sustainable futures and highlight the need to tackle global challenges such as climate change and rising inequalities at global and local scales. The deluge of data, that is nowadays available from a wide variety of sources, offers new opportunities to evaluate lands and cities in terms of their sustainability, and has enormous potential in supporting policy makers with key evidence in their decision-making process.
This course introduces the concept of sustainability in its complexity - encompassing the social, economic, environmental, and spatial domains - and the role of data to better understand societal and spatial dynamics. Students are also provided with knowledge of programming for geospatial analysis and mapping in the context of evaluating sustainability in lands and cities. They work in teams and individually, to investigate how data can underpin and support decision making for sustainable cities.
This course requires exercising critical thinking, acknowledging the challenges and limitations of working with data, and embraces interdisciplinarity to appreciate the complex nature of sustainability. A wide spectrum of competencies and backgrounds, spanning the social, economic and environmental as well as data science, are leveraged in this course to capitalise on data in the context of sustainability.
The course makes use of a range of digital learning environments, enabling students to build knowledge across discussion forums, livestreamed sessions, and other collaborative networked spaces.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - Hybrid Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute delivers many of its courses in hybrid mode. This means that you may have some online students joining sessions for this course. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities.
Students should be aware that:
- Classrooms used in this course will have additional technology in place: in some cases, students might not be able to sit in areas away from microphones or outside the field of view of all cameras.
- All presentations, and whole class discussions will be recorded (see the Lecture Recording and Virtual Classroom policies for more details).
You will need access to a personal computing device for this course. Most activities will take place in a web browser, unless otherwise stated. We recommend using a device with a screen, a physical keyboard, and internet access.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 4,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 7,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 9,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
The course will be assessed by means of the following components:
1) Group Presentation and Reproducible Notebook (30%)
Students will work in groups and develop a data project that focuses on the social, economic, environmental and spatial dimensions of sustainability in lands and cities. The presentation will consist of at least 6 slides (Introduction, Research Questions, Data & Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion) showing the group work and will need to demonstrate a critical understanding and ability to analyse the data provided. During the group work students will receive formative feedback on progress.
Learning Outcomes Assessed by Component: 2, 3, 4, 5
2) 2,500 Word Essay (70%)
The essay will expand and elaborate critically the work carried out for the data project. Students will work individually and search for relevant scientific and grey literature. The essay will also offer the opportunity to examine the sustainability issues revealed in the data project case study and to consider possible solutions for addressing them in the future. The investigation is meant to be non-experimental, however, students who wish to, can include additional data analysis.
Learning Outcomes Assessed by Component: 1, 2, 3 |
| Feedback |
Feedback on any formative assessment may be provided in various formats, for example, to include written, oral, video, face-to-face, whole class, or individual. The Course Organiser will decide which format is most appropriate in relation to the nature of the assessment.
Feedback on both formative and summative in-course assessed work will be provided in time to be of use in subsequent assessments within the course.
Feedback on the summative assessment(s) will be provided in written form via Learn, the University of Edinburgh's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
Formative Feedback Opportunity:
Formative feedback is ongoing feedback which monitors learning and is intended to improve performance in the same course, in future courses, and also beyond study.
Proposals of the data analysis work to be carried out in groups during the class and presented by each group. Verbal comments from educator form the basis of the formative feedback. This will feed-forward the group analysis work during the teaching activities. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Develop and interpret metrics to evaluate sustainability in lands and cities from multiple dimensions and at different scales.
- Investigate and report on data leveraged from case studies using the tools of data science.
- Think critically about data usage in relation to sustainable environments.
- Collaborate effectively with others.
- Acquire the ability to independently develop data analysis and visualisation.
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Reading List
Essential Reading:
The Dimensions of Sustainability:
UN-HABITAT - The New Urban Agenda Illustrated Handbook Chapter 1 https://unhabitat.org/the-new-urban-agenda-illustrated
Geospatial Analysis and Data Visualisation:
Tonny J Oyana Spatial analysis with R Chapters 1 and 4
R Notebooks provided by educator
The Role of Data to Evaluate Sustainability and its Challenges:
UN-HABITAT - The New Urban Agenda Illustrated Handbook Section 3.3 https://unhabitat.org/the-new-urban-agenda-illustrated
NUA Monitoring Framework and related indicators, 2020 pp. 1-18
Urban Sustainability Observatories: Leveraging Urban Experimentation for Sustainability Science and Policy accessible at https://hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/zunejoo2/release/5
Conclusions of Sarah Williams, Data Action Using Data for Public Good, 2020 MIT
One Set of the Following Readings:
Social Dimension
Gauvin, L., Tizzoni, M., Piaggesi, S. et al. Gender gaps in urban mobility. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 7, 11 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0500-x
The Atlas of Inequality Project - https://inequality.media.mit.edu/
Mapping Segregation: MIT's Atlas of Inequality 15min video presentation accessible at https://carto.com/customer-stories/mit-cities-government/
Economic Dimension
Graham, Mark, Stefano De Sabbata, and Matthew A. Zook. "Towards a study of information geographies:(im) mutable augmentations and a mapping of the geographies of information." Geo: Geography and environment 2.1 (2015): 88-105.
Eviction Map accessible at https://evictionlab.org/map/#/2016?geography=states&type=er
Peter Hepburn, Olivia Jin, Joe Fish, Emily Lemmerman, Anne Kat Alexander & Matthew Desmond, The Eviction Lab, Preliminary Analysis: Eviction Filing Patterns in 2021 accessible at https://evictionlab.org/us-eviction-filing-patterns-2021/
Environmental Dimension
European Environmental Agency Monitoring the circular economy accessible at https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/monitoring-the-circular-economy-with
MIT Project Treepedia accessible at http://senseable.mit.edu/treepedia
Spatial Dimension
Burton E. Measuring Urban Compactness in UK Towns and Cities. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. 2002;29(2):219-250. doi:10.1068/b2713
The Puddings, Population Density Changes accessible at https://pudding.cool/2018/10/city_3d/
Recommended Reading:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/24/climate/racism-redlining-cities-global-warming.html
Documentary: The Human Scale - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2414454/ |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | EFI,PG,Level 11,Sustainability,Sustainable Lands and Cities |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Alessia Calafiore
Tel:
Email: acalafio@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Yasmine Lewis
Tel:
Email: yasmine.lewis@ed.ac.uk |
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