Sustainable & Resilient Cities for the Global North & Global South

Project overview

This project aims to help partner cities in the Global North and Global South accelerate and achieve their goals linked to SDG 11 – creating and delivering holistic sustainability and resilience strategies and projects over an initial 1 to 5 year timeframe.  Students will work with partner cities and commercial partners to apply frameworks that identify and analyse urban resilience and sustainability issues and opportunities; understand community and political needs and priorities; and design appropriate delivery and financing models.  Confirmed initial partner cities are Glasgow, Milan, Pittsburgh, Singapore, Lilongwe, Cape Town and Surat.  A small number of additional cities are expected to join.  Current commercial partners are AIG (American Insurance Group), and Wood (engineering consultancy).  International students from universities in our partner cities may also participate.

What will students be working on?

This VIP provides students with the opportunity to gain experience, enhance and develop skills through applying their skills to the development and delivery of sustainability and resilience projects and programmes in real world contexts in cities internationally.

Introductory seminars will introduce the SDGs and the wider international context - and then the specific VIP, its objectives, expected outputs, assessment format, key people, and provides briefing on the context of the relevant partner cities and their needs.  This will be followed by seminars tailored to the VIP projects undertaken by individual student teams.  These seminars will discuss the needs of the relevant partner cities; the objectives and outputs proposed for individual student group projects; the techniques that students propose to use address these objectives; and potential barriers and issues for the proposed project and how the students propose to overcome these. These seminars will assist students to develop and refine their project charter.

Student teams will work with selected cities in the Global North and Global to assist development of sustainability and resilience strategies and projects South (Glasgow, Milan, Pittsburgh, Singapore, Abuja, Lilongwe, and Surat are partner cities).  Example activities would include working with particular cities to:

• Develop an understanding of sustainability issues and opportunities
• Map existing sustainability projects and policies 
• Assist partner cities to identify and design sustainability solutions that deliver on their goals and are a strong fit for their context
• Engage with local partners and communities to understand their issues and priorities
• Assist in developing and analysing business cases for specific resilience and sustainability projects
• Assess impacts of alternative projects and policies

The programme is closely aligned with SDG11 – which aims to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable – and will contribute to achieving a range of other SDGs, including  SDG1 (No Poverty), SDG7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), SDG12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG13 (Climate Action), SDG15 (Life on Land), and SDG17 (Partnerships for the Goals).

Please note: availability can vary between degrees. Please contact your advisor of studies and the project lead for more information.

Have more questions, or want to get involved?

Please contact Richard.bellingham@strath.ac.uk or apply for this project.