Sustainability and the Built Environment: An Overview

In this comprehensive course, examine sustainability principles as they apply to the built environment—from the economic, environmental and social-equity perspectives. Learn how researchers and analysts define sustainability, and how they measure and track progress. Explore historical precursors of the current sustainability movement, and how they translate into planning, engineering, architecture, landscape architecture, construction and other fields. Examine planning, design and building problems holistically, and learn about life-cycle analyses. Analyze numerous case studies, specific projects and emerging technologies and planning approaches from around the world. Students are encouraged to pursue their own passions and interests in sustainability and to work on real-world problem solving requiring multiple disciplines and perspectives.