Educating urban actors and future urban leaders

Urban Transformation School – a multi-disciplinary school for urban actors who can work in between disciplines

Location: St. Petersburg, Russia .
Institution: ITMO University, St. Petersburg

Role: Program leadership for the inauguration class

Education around urban development typically focusses on a particular discipline – design, economics, social or legal aspects. That leads to a lack of interaction between the different disciplines and the city and government departments. Contemporary cities are complex and require more interaction.

The new urban actors and leaders addresses this deficit. The Master Program ‘Design of Urban Ecosystems’ provides a multidisciplinary education for individuals who want to bring things together and enable a more interdisciplinary solution to urban problems. The program focusses on generalist education that touches on all relevant aspects of contemporary city development.

MLA+ directors Yana Golubeva and Markus Appenzeller were the first program leaders of the Urban Transformation School. Next to defining the initial curriculum and its content, they also lead the urban design and analysis course, resulting in the detailed spatial, economic and social research and vision for Kronstadt island in the bay of St. Petersburg.

Stages:
2013 – 2015: Inaugural program leadership
2015 – today: Ongoing teaching activities

Team:
MLA+: Markus Appenzeller & Yana Golubeva