58 BA DESIGNING CITIES (BADC) has the ambition to tackle together the multiple challenges of city sustainability, inclusion and resiliency, dealing, meanwhile, with a new dimension of unpredictability emerged with the pandemic. Michael Neuman, Professor of Sustainable Urbanism and member of the BADC teaching staff, recently wrote in ‘Post-pandemic urbanism: criteria for a new normal’ (2021): The new normal is that there is no normal anymore. Since the disruption of our normal lives during the pandemic we have no certainty regarding how and where we will live and work in the future. During the pandemic, we were forced to embrace changes in our daily routines, in the way we live. For the first time in centuries, since at least the Industrial Revolution, if not millennia in some cultures and places, humans have had to live like all the other species on the planet have always had to live since the beginning of evolution on Earth. That is, living day to day, with uncertainty, not being able to plan for the future, and not being able to rely on our customar y methods and traditions of living. In response to this, our course has prompted students to design more sustainable places and futures, to address the challenge of building post-pandemic climate resilient cities, and to develop meanwhile critical thinking and imagination. Through a number of real life projects in the context of changing London (for example in Greenwich, Hounslow and Newham), studio-based teaching, and industry projects (with INGMEdia, Jacobs, Grosvenor, WSP), students have been exposed to new problems to solve and new concrete solutions to explore. In early 2022 a team of the ‘Emerging Territories’ Research Group (Krystallia Kamvasinou, Giulio Verdini and Ripin Kalra) received a Quintin Hogg Trust fund to study ‘Students’ readiness for climate and health urban projects’, where also BADC students are involved. The project, which is currently on-going, seeks to explore which interdisciplinary skills the ‘post-pandemic’ new normal will require. By bringing together disciplines such as urban planning and design, architecture, biological science, transpor t and psychology, the idea is to test new ways of learning and new ways of defining problems and solutions. The result will contribute to innovate the new BADC course which is currently undergoing revalidation, with the idea to create a unique experience for our students and a solid background for the future professionals operating in the field of sustainable urbanism. The best students’ works are generously awarded by JCDecaux. The course is accredited by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI). Giulio Verdini & Roudaina Al Khani Course Leaders

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