Abstract
The current health crisis forces millions of people to stay at home. The isolation raises the awareness about the essential role of public space for the functioning of cities and societies. The study and design of public space is the focus of CUHK’s Urban Design programme. Each year, it organizes an international workshop allowing students to study renowned public spaces in cities such as Barcelona, Berlin, or New York. The direct engagement with public spaces in different contexts has been the most popular and effective learning activity of the programme. However, with the current health crisis this course cannot be organized. The proposed project aims to develop an online workshop format, which is similarly engaging to the study trip. It will be organized with public space experts from Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, and the USA, and with The Journal of Public Space (open access) supported by the United Nations Human Settlement Programme, for the implementation of the New Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. After the testing phase of the course, it is planned to develop it into a learning tool for students from around the world allowing them to gain global perspectives on public space from home.
Brief write-up
Project objectives
The objective of this project was to develop a learning format to study remotely urban issues in different parts of the world at occasion of the COVID-19 pandemic and co-produce place-sensitive solutions aligned with the global framework of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Activities, process and outcomes
To meet this objective the team co-developed with partners from University of Auckland, Parsons New School (New York), and the Journal of Public Space, a 6-days online workshop format which included lectures, group work and review. Beyond urban design knowledge the workshop taught Remote Ethnography approaches, Web-GIS, and included inputs by frontline social workers. With the continuing pandemic, a follow-up workshop was organized in 2021, calibrating and enriching the earlier approach and including also Federal University of Rio De Janeiro as additional partner from the Global South.
Deliverables and evaluation
Deliverables: 15 video lectures, virtual guided tours, pdfs, and an e-book of the design projects.
Evaluation: Course and Teaching Evaluation (CTEs), polls, and written reflections which demonstrated a highly positive student feedback (CTEs around 5.83 of 6.0). Projects were also evaluated by an international jury.
Dissemination, diffusion, impact and sharing of good practices
Results were disseminated in a trailer video, a public webinar, talks and an e-book freely accessible online, as part of the larger initiative “2020 – A Year without Public Space under the COVID-19 Pandemic”, co-developed with the Journal of Public Space (a partner of UN Habitat).
Impact on teaching and learning
The developed learning format allowed students developing place-sensitive solutions for complex issues in different parts of the world in an engaging collaboration with international peers “from home”.
