Metropolitan Challenges

Feline van Vliet

Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions

In this course on metropolitan challenges, students are introduced to various typologies of metropoles throughout the world, with the city of Amsterdam as a real life example. The course covers all aspects of what makes a metropolis. It integrates technical systems and networks, from the point of view that each system is open, and influences the other. It gives a historical-critical overview, with reasons for the existence and emergence of cities, and the technological challenges they face today. The metropolis is approached as a web of interrelated socio-technical systems in which professionals are challenged to integrate knowledge and analytical, design and engineering skills. The course presents a range of conceptual views on technologies and practices in the cycles and spheres of urban mobility, water, healthcare and wellbeing, food, waste, and energy. Students learn and develop different concepts related to contemporary urban practices, and elaborate on them by means of modelling and design, producing a written account. Learning activities in this course include lectures, studio research work in teams, field study in Amsterdam (by executing observations, interviews with stakeholders, and other methods presented in the course), as well as presentations and peer evaluations.