Duration of Program:
Late February - mid-March: Mandatory virtual Canvas Program
March 1st: Date by which we will confirm how program is proceeding. Do not book flights or confirm other arrangements until after this date.
TBD: Pre-Departure Orientation
May 10 - June 22: Four (4) preparatory sessions will be completed prior to depature**.
August 1-12: Study in Helsinki, Finland
*These dates are provided as guidelines and are subject to change
**To discuss attending preparatory sessions virtually, please contact the Field School Director.
Are you curious to learn how local contexts, languages, and histories can shape urban sustainability practices and outcomes?
"Comparative Urban Sustainability" is a field school open to both undergraduate and graduate students that will offer preliminary sessions in the Vancouver region and a two-week field travel program in the Helsinki region in Finland to broaden understanding of sustainability through a comparative lens between the Helsinki and Vancouver contexts.
The purpose of this course is to advance an understanding of sustainability beyond familiar knowledge and context and encourage participants to think beyond their individual ideas and cultural biases around sustainability.
The preliminary sessions in the Vancouver region offer an introduction to the urban context of the Helsinki region, discuss some key differences between Canadian and Nordic urban planning practices, and offer an introduction to the topic of urban sustainable development in light of academic literature.
The sessions will prepare the group for the travel period in Finland where the purpose is to experience and delve into different aspects of urban sustainability more deeply. In Finland the travel includes multiple field tours in the city, meetings with diverse sustainability experts, museum visits, and experiences with locals in the coastal environment of the Helsinki region.
All students with an interest in social science and in questions of urban sustainability are welcome to apply. While uncertainty still persists around actual travel, the course is planned to take an alternative form in the Vancouver region in case in person travel is not possible.
Undergraduate Students: 9 credits
URB 497-9: Comparative Urban Sustainability
Graduate Students: 6 credits
URB 691-6: Comparative Urban Sustainability
For a full course syllabus, please see here.
