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Smart Urban Green Infrastructure Online Course

Explore the Potential of Carbon-Smart Green Infrastructure

Green infrastructure can mitigate the impacts of climate change on urban areas and increase biodiversity in densely populated areas. Urban green infrastructure (UGI) can be considered a next-generation solution for society to deal simultaneously with climate and social pressures. Carbon sequestration and storage have huge potential for mitigating climate and can be applied to urban green areas and infrastructure. 

This online course provides different approaches to Carbon Smart Urban Green Infrastructure. During the course, you will reflect on Urban Mobility Challenges and grasp the context and bigger picture of Urban Mobility, the built environment, and green infrastructure.

With the help of our faculty, you will gain an understanding of the context and the world in which we operate and some of the challenges that planners have to face. You will investigate the different advantages of carbon-smart urban green infrastructure and their applications to urban contexts. Moreover, you can get richer experience and context with our case studies and examples. Finally, we will dive into urban green infrastructure planning, design, construction, and maintenance and present different case examples. This course leverages research and publications conducted by the CO-CARBON project and its researchers.

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This online course is designed to support independent study optimally. Course contents, methods, and tools are hand-picked to be applied in your work environment.

The course is built with faculty members from the Aalto University Department of Built Environment, the Department of Architecture, and researchers from the Co-Carbon project.

The course has been co-created with experts from the Co-Carbon project. One aim of the course is to leverage the project's research insights and disseminate the project's outcomes to a wide audience.

Benefits

One of the key aims of this course is to empower and motivate you to explore the potential of carbon-smart urban green infrastructure while fitting urban spaces for the impacts of climate change and using them in your work. You will have access to several lectures, case examples, short knowledge checks, and reflection assignments. These help you find tools and methodologies you can use immediately in your organization. The course is designed to support independent study optimally. The learning content is split into weeks to help you study at any time that suits you. Each week contains materials in video and article formats. At the end of each week, we provide activities and tasks to enhance your learning experience, including Echo Teams assignments.

Apply basic principles of urban green infrastructure to your design and planning assignments
Assess the impact of mobility infrastructure on climate change
Identify the potential of carbon-smart urban green infrastructure to mitigate climate change
Identify the benefits of urban green infrastructure to human well-being

For

The course is designed for urban mobility and transportation professionals, urban planners, and other professionals working in this field at any stage of their career.

Contents and Schedule

This online course is structured into five core weeks and will take approximately ten hours to complete, depending on your speed and preferred study style. The study weeks consist of video lectures, reflective knowledge checks, and an Echo Teams assignment, offering you a unique insight into communicative planning processes. Please note that the Echo Teams are not compulsory for the course. Still, we highly recommend you use this tool and arrange Echo Team meetings with your peers, teams, or colleagues from your work community to reflect and receive feedback on your learning journey.

The underlying frameworks, tools, and methodologies used in this course are based on common planning practices and academic research conducted in the field. We strongly encourage you to take action when invited to do so, that is, complete the knowledge checks, join in the discussion, be active in the Echo Teams assignment, reflect on your work, and think about the relationship between the lecture content and your work. The study journal provided in the course materials is a good tool for keeping notes on your reflections and recording any questions that may arise during the course.

  • Mobility, mobility infrastructure, and climate change
  • The impact of urban green infrastructure on human behavior, health, and well-being
  • Planning carbon-smart urban green infrastructure from city-level to green spaces
  • Urban green infrastructure as means for urban regeneration

Participation in the course is free of charge and grants you basic access to the online course for six (6) weeks upon registration. Unlimited access to this online course is available for a separate fee.

This online course is designed as a self-study course. No individual feedback or support by the course educators will be provided. 

The course videos are subtitled in English. 

Study Weeks

Instructors

Mari Ariluoma

Mari Ariluoma is a doctoral researcher at Aalto University and a landscape architect and co-founder of Nomaji landscape architects. She has extensive expertise in landscape design, construction, and urban design, both in academic work and practice.

Ariluoma’s research interest is the practical applications of sustainable green and blue infrastructure, ecosystem services, and nature-based solutions. Currently, Ariluoma is working on the CO-CARBON project focusing on carbon-smart urban green. 

Ranja Hautamäki

Ranja Hautamäki is an Associate Professor in Landscape Architecture and head of research in landscape architecture at Aalto University. She has a 13-year professional background as the head of landscape planning at the City of Tampere.

Hautamäki's research focuses on urban nature and its planning practices and discourses. She works now on a multidisciplinary research project on urban nature in climate change mitigation and develops solutions for carbon-smart planning. 

Liisa Kulmala

Senior researcher Liisa Kulmala acts as the Head of the Carbon Cycle Group at the Finnish Meteorological Institute. She has studied various biotic processes in the carbon cycle in forests, agricultural fields, and urban green spaces.

Her current work focuses on quantifying the climate mitigation potential of land ecosystems and finding multi-beneficial management practices for the land use sector.

Miloš Mladenović

Miloš N. Mladenović is an Associate Professor at the Spatial Planning and Transportation Engineering Group, Department of Built Environment, School of Engineering. 

His current research interests include the governance of emerging mobility technologies and the development of decision-support methods. His previous and current teaching responsibilities include transport systems policy, planning, modeling, management, and design courses. 

Outi Tahvonen

Dr. Outi Tahvonen has a long practical background in green industries and an active network with various actors in the field. She finished her PhD in Landscape architecture in 2019.

Tahvonen's research interest includes multidisciplinary topics to support sustainability, such as the role of low-density housing in urban green infrastructure and its role in stormwater management and carbon sequestration.  

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