Urbanized areas around the globe are increasingly becoming the focus of debate around sustainability. The majority of the world’s population now resides in Cities and their urbanized regions. This figure is projected to be 75% by 2030. This course will address how urban designers can and should go ¿beyond the building¿ to embrace a more balanced and holistic systems approach to design and policy initiatives for these critical centers of civilization. This is to integrate them into and go beyond physical or environmental aspects of current notions of sustainable design, beyond the current popularity of narrowly focused rating systems (such as LEED ND) and single issues (such as energy). Building on the introduction to Sustainable Urbanism in the MUD Current Issues seminar, this course will address the complex environmental, economic, social, cultural, political, and ethical forces that affect City + Regional form. The seminar will explore notable national and international precedents of integrated design strategies for Cities + Regions (Chicago, Portland, Freiburg, Curitiba, Barcelona, Emscher Park, et al). Within this globalized context and broadened framework of sustainability, we will ask the students to define the meaning of sustainability in the context of cities and urban development. Themes addressed will include: Citizenship: how will the need for sustainable urbanism create a new citizen for the 21st century? What are the values/value systems that will drive the creation of sustainable place? What will be the evolving role of the citizen from awareness and lifestyle changes to active role as designer and stewards of their environment Equity: addressing the imbalance between resource rich urbanized areas in low growth mode and those that are in high growth mode where resource scarcity exists. How will equity play a role in providing for under-capitalized/served communities in determining resources allocation and accessibility? Economics: focusing on strategic investments where and when do we invest within the city and region? What will be the evolving role of the public and private sectors and partnerships? Urban density is already an emerging result of such debates. What sort of urban form will such policy and investment decisions drive? Infrastructure: establishing a broadened notion of infrastructure the new ecosystem of the city including ¿blue, green, and gray defined by water and marine resources, all aspects of the natural environment and built public realm, and the man-made technologies and infrastructure that will create future utilities and movement systems that will support mobility and accessibility. How can we balance population growth and needs with the very real necessity of protecting increasingly fragile natural systems of the planet? Measuring Sustainable Urbanism current metrics such as LEED are not suited to the scale of the city and region. There is an emergent field investigation how can such rating systems be expanded and adapted (e.g. LAND, BREEAM, et al). Likely entirely new approaches to measuring sustainability at the urban scale will be required.