The new Bachelor’s Degree in Urban Sciences (BDUSc) was presented at the ESCI-UPF building on Thursday 26th. This is a new official three-year degree, taught entirely in English and responsive to the challenges posed by the growing urbanization of the world as well as the problems of pollution and sustainability that affect people living in big cities. The degree is expected to begin the next academic year 2018-2019.

This new degree, promoted by IAAC and ESCI-UPF, is an academic program that has great applicability to the challenges faced by cities and enormous potential for new professionals who can help in the management of cities.  Xavier Cuadras, director of ESCI-UPF; Willy Müller, co-founder of IAAC and director of the Urban Sciences Lab at IAAC, and Dr. Mathis Wackernagel, director of the Global Footprint Network and co-creator of the “ecological footprint” concept, participated in the degree presentation.

During the event, Willy Müller explained the reason for which an educational initiative such as this one was created: “We are moving towards societies where urban population is increasingly concentrated in cities, where the irruption of new technologies affects our daily lives and where great challenges such as making cities a hub of economic activity and neighbourhood coexistence mark the agenda for a sustainable future”.

Mathis Wackernagel’s intervention had a more reflective focus on the increase in population in cities, which will concentrate 80% of the world total in 2050, and the great transition from rural to urban areas that will bring challenges for managing basic issues such as mobility, maintenance and renovation of obsolete infrastructures, overpopulation, providing basic needs, and pollution, amongst others.

Urban Sciences graduates will have an opportunity to design and plan for this growing and complex reality. Wackernagel also pointed out that another global challenge is to stop consuming and using resources at the current rate. “This is not an ethical question, but a mathematical one”, he said. According to his calculations, the world consumes 70% more than its possibilities. Clearly, where many see a problem, he sees an opportunity. The challenge is to turn this dynamic into a sustainable one and therefore we must think, reflect and, above all, act.

In this sense, Wackernagel recalls that there are powerful tools available to the new generations to carry out this collective undertaking: among others, the new technologies and the connectivity they offer. However, in his view there is a lack of awareness and an action plan. The Urban Sciences degree is intended to be the platform for training new generations with the tools to find new solutions to current problems.