The Future City: Transforming Urban Infr

This course will introduce students to technological innovations that are helping cities around the world create healthier, safer, more equitable, and more resilient futures.

Its foundation is based in two sets of traditional disciplines – architecture, urban design, and real estate development, and structural, civil and mechanical engineering – but also incorporates newer areas of study – such as data analytics and smart communication technologies - that offer opportunities for major advances in the quality of municipal service delivery. The syllabus will cover five distinct sectors in the field of urban infrastructure: transportation and mobility, buildings, power, sanitation, and communications. For each sector, the nature and framework of current urban delivery systems will serve as the foundation for exploring a handful of key technologies in the process of changing – and in most cases radically improving – the ways the built environment can support the lives of city residents. Columbia students from diverse backgrounds will be motivated to help realize the promise of tomorrow’s “smart city” in terms of livability, safety and inclusion.

Course is open to all graduate students, and select seats are available for undergraduate students upon application.

This course is co-created between Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and School of Engineering and Applied Science, is part of a University initiative to promote cross-school courses: https://provost.columbia.edu/news/provost-awards-grants-create-cross-school-courses