This book is inspired by teaching on a postgraduate module, the Sustainable Urban Development Project (BPLN0059), within the MSc Sustainable Urbanism programme at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Teaching is delivered by six academic tutors led by Dr Catalina Turcu across two master programmes, MSc Sustainable Urbanism and MSc Transport and City Planning, and runs over eleven weeks during the winter term (January to March). Half-way through the project work, the students undertake one-week fieldtrip to the country and location of the project site.
The module’s teaching philosophy rests on the Capstone teaching and learning approach. That means that students work or ‘collaborate’ directly with a ‘client’ (i.e. a municipality or city in this case) while on an academic assignment. Students have to deal with complex urban challenges in the development of a large-scale site and propose 15-20 year long Strategic Sustainable Urban Plans (SSUPs) for the site. This book draws on a selection of student work from the 2016-17 and 2017-18 cohorts and looks at a site in the municipality of Nacka in the Stockholm Region, Nacka City (or Västra Sicklaön in Swedish). The book is developed over four parts: introduction, site analysis, theoretical underpinnings of student work and, finally, an overview of four student projects.
