Locally Organized Transitions for Urban Sustainable Spaces

The Erasmus+ project “Locally organized transition of urban sustainable spaces” (LOTUS) aims to support individuals, especially students in disciplines related to urban energy transition, in acquiring and developing the skills and competences necessary to implement changes to urban energy transition and planning processes, in order to reach the European Union (EU) and United Nations (UN) climate goals. LOTUS design the tools needed by teachers in higher education to reach the above mentioned more integrated and interdisciplinary approach by proposing an interactive curriculum, which could allow Europe’s future city planners, architects and administrative staff to guide communities to a greener future and transfer successful concepts across borders and national contexts. Accordingly, the project consists of implementing four components: the Curriculum on urban transition of energy (CUTE), the Catalogue of Real Cases (CoRC), the serious game on urban energy management (urbEN), and the textbook on urban energy transition in Europe.
This textbook aims to be a comprehensive interdisciplinary compilation of content on the topic of energetic transition in urban systems, dealing with an overall pedagogical objective. The textbook contains essential theoretical and practice relevant learning contents on the energetic transition in urban systems and the general aspects of relevance on the topic throughout Europe.
Reflecting on how urban energy transition is taught opens up some reflections, and a methodological proposal, related to the way of teaching it in courses. The aim of this textbook is to propose an integrated operative framework applied according to an active learning strategy, aimed at supporting students in dealing with urban energy transition topic in a structured way, directly starting from the intellectual outputs of the LOTUS project. Indeed, the application of intellectual outputs will support students in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competences, increasing their awareness of and participation in sustainable development, professional planning environments, as well as civic and social daily activities involved in successful urban energy transition projects.