Educating for urban sustainability: A transdisciplinary approach

An understanding of sustainability issues should be a key component of degree programmes. It is widely regarded as being a central attribute to professional practice and responsible global citizenship, arguably more so for the training of teachers since they potentially influence their students. This issue was brought to the fore when responsibility for delivering the 'design and the environment' course was transferred to the building discipline at the University of Newcastle in Australia as a result of restructuring. The attractiveness of the subject as an elective, the need to make it accessible to distance learning students and the desirability of applying transdisciplinary approaches to solving environmental problems presented the course designers with both challenges and opportunities, particularly in devising an assessment context within which students from multiple disciplines could be exposed to, and learn from each other's professional environmental evaluation norms. This paper describes an innovative holistic, multi-criteria problem-solving course design that allows a diverse mix of undergraduates to develop a transdisciplinary understanding of sustainability issues through the use of learning contracts. It reports the experiences of staff and students involved with the course, highlighting the beneficial outcomes

Integrating Human-Centred Design Approach into Sustainable-Oriented 3D Printing Systems

Modern 3D printing systems have become pervasive and widely used both in professional and in informal contexts, including sustainable-oriented ones. However, the risk to create very effective but non-sustainable solutions is very high since 3D printing systems could potentially increase the environmental emergencies and the unsustainable growth. In the transition process toward sustainable ways of production and consumption, the so-called human factor still plays an important role in the achievement of sustainable-oriented actions; it drives the adoption of proper lifestyles that directly and indirectly influence the ways through which such technologies are used. Therefore, future Sustainable 3D Printing Systems should integrate the humans in the systems’ development. This study presents two important results: (a) it presents a set of interdisciplinary ‘Sustainable 3D Printing Systems’, which compose a promising sustainable-oriented scenario useful to support the transition processes toward sustainable designs and productions, and (b) it proposes a new strategy for the integration of human-centred aspects into Sustainable 3D Printing Systems, by combining insights from human-centred design approach

Commercializing Sustainable Innovations in the Market through Entrepreneurship

Organised by: Cranfield UniversityThe system innovations for sustainability require changes at multiple-domains (social, cultural, institutional and technological) and multiple-levels (micro-, meso-, and macro-levels) of the socio-technological system. From a sustainable production and consumption view, systems innovations can be enhanced through a PSS strategy at organisational level. This can be achieved through new entrepreneurial entries because of their potential in commercialising sustainable innovations and consequently bringing the necessary institutional change that favours such innovations. This paper aims at investigating how sustainability-driven entrepreneurs enhance the commercialisation of sustainable PSS and the consequences of this process and the potential role of design in it.Mori Seiki – The Machine Tool Compan

Natural Blends, Sustainable Innovations and Income Growth

The paper discusses innovations for both income growth and the generation of better environmental qualities. This is possible in theory but progress in practices is slow. We argue that social pressures to contain pollution were effective insofar they invoked environmental policies all over the world, which enabled to reduce pollution in some countries at decreasing costs. This is achieved in the past five decades despite fierce resistance of vested interests in industries and policymaking. Economies are still extremely wasteful but there is progress in many countries toward ecoefficiency, which is illustrated for the European Union. In the future, a growing demand for sustainability is expected. This demand is not primarily because of costly natural resource in consumption, they decrease in real prices, but due to the changes in social structures towards more knowledge work and growing leisure time. The knowledge work and leisure time require more personal interactions even though the labour costs increase and more environmental qualities through cleaner production and consumption. These demands invoke innovations that blend environmental qualities with artefacts. Such natural blends are highly demanded and the qualified blends are highly paid. Sustainable innovations through blending of natural and cultural attributes are in progress. Innovators become a driving force for sustainability and the innovative networks key elements for the resulting outcomes. These networks entail distributed business models. Environmental qualities constitute highly demanded values. The challenge is to translate this social sense of urgency into new policies and market arrangements in support of innovators for sustainable development