Quality of Life: Livability in Future Cities

Architecture
Learn how urban planning, energy, climate, ecology and mobility impact the livability and quality of life of a “future city.” This course is no longer actively supervised. The content of the course is freely accessible to you, but there is no guarantee of its correctness or availability. Please be aware that the course cannot be completed with a certificate.

Course Details

Language English
Duration 11 week
Effort 3 hours/week
Description

Description


Cities are becoming the predominant living and working environment of humanity, and for this reason, livability or quality of life in the city has become crucial.

This urban planning course will focus on four areas that directly affect livability in a city: Urban energy, urban climate, urban ecology and urban mobility. The course begins by presenting measurable criteria for the assessment of livability, and how to positively influence the design of cities towards greater livability. We will focus on this basic topic of the human habitat in a holistic way, and introduce possibilities of participatory urban design by citizens, leading towards the development of a citizen design science.

You will be able to share your experiences with the other participants in the course and also with the experts from the teaching team. In completing this course, you will better understand how to make a city more livable by going beyond the physical appearance and by focusing on different properties and impact factors of the urban system.

Livability in Future Cities is the second course in a series of MOOCs under the title “Future Cities.” This series aims to bring the latest research on planning, managing and transforming cities to places where this knowledge has the highest benefit for its citizens. “Future Cities” provided an overview, and this course will focus on livability in existing and new cities.

Course instructors

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Alex Erath

Dr. Alex Erath is currently a senior researcher at the NRF funded Future Cities Laboratory. As research module coordinator (Deputy PI), he manages the research module on Mobility and Transportation Planning and lead in this role the implementation and fur…

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Estefania Tapias

Estefania Tapias is Postdoctoral fellow and Lecturer at the Chair of Information Architecture, ETH Zurich. Her research is focus on Information Cities and climate-sensitive urban planning. Estefania attained her doctoral degree at ETH Zurich and obtained …

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Jan Carmeliet

Since June 2008, Jan Carmeliet is full professor at the Chair of Building Physics at ETH Zürich and head of the Laboratory of Multiscale studies in Building Physics of EMPA, Dübendorf (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology), Swit…

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Jane Jacobs

Professor Jacobs’ received her undergraduate and Masters’ training in Human Geography from the University of Adelaide, Australia. She completed her PhD at University College London. Prior to joining Yale-NUS College, Professor Jacobs taught at University …

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Matthias Berger

Dr. Matthias Berger is Senior Researcher and Module Coordinator of the Simulation Platform Module IX at the Future Cities Laboratory in the Singapore-ETH Centre, working in Singapore since 2011. The research focus is simulation and visualization of energy…

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Matthias Roth

Matthias Roth is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore. He holds a PhD degree from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Canada). His research examines how land-use changes affect local clim…

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Peter Edwards

Peter Edwards is director of the Singapore-ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability. An ecologist by training, he obtained his Ph.D. degree from Cambridge University for a study on nutrient cycling in tropical rain forest. In 1993 he was appoint…

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Gerhard Schmitt

Gerhard Schmitt is Professor of Information Architecture at ETH Zurich, leader of the ETH Future Cities Laboratory Simulation Platform, Founding Director of the Singapore-ETH Centre in Singapore, and ETH Zurich Senior Vice President for ETH Global. His re…

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Stephen Cairns

Stephen Cairns completed his undergraduate degree in anthropology and classical studies at the University of Otago. He trained in architecture at the University of Auckland, and practiced as an architect in New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific, designin…

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Ulrike Wissen Hayek

Dr. Ulrike Wissen Hayek is Senior Scientist and Lecturer at the Chair Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems (PLUS) at the ETH Zurich (Switzerland) since 2012. She holds a PhD from the ETH Zurich, a diploma in Landscape Architecture and Planning from the…

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ETH Zurich

Freedom and individual responsibility, entrepreneurial spirit and open-mindedness: ETH Zurich stands on a bedrock of true Swiss values. Our university for science and technology dates back to the year 1855, when the founders of modern-day Switzerland crea…

58 instructors