Presentation short abstract

Starting from a post-socialist perspective, this paper looks at how to prepare future urban planners to bring about postgrowth cities. What are key characteristics of pedagogical programmes that address postgrowth topics, what skills are fostered and how do they generate transformation?

Presentation long abstract

In post-socialist cities of Romania, civil society actors are addressing ecological transformations and empowering local communities to participate in political decision making. These initiatives can be interpreted as the starting point of a municipalist movement in a society with a young democracy, characterized by little civic engagement and high distrust between citizens and public institutions.

Considering this context, this paper is taking one step forward, aiming to understand the potential of pedagogical programmes in generating transformation, in order to prepare the next generation of urban planning professionals to facilitate participatory processes for just and sustainable cities.

This research includes case study analysis of two Living Labs located in Bucharest, belonging to two distinct educational programmes relating to postgrowth topics: 1. sustainable food systems planning, and 2. community cultural centers as infrastructures for public participation.

The data was gathered by participating as a student in the two semester-long programmes and the subsequent actions, and conducting interviews with the tutors of the Living Labs during a two year follow-up.

The results represent a set of guidelines for designing pedagogical programmes that foster facilitating skills, like including action-research methods, transdisciplinary collaborations, horizontal hierarchical structures etc. Following the programme, students, tutors and organisers demonstrated a higher capacity for collaboration.

As changing existing systems takes time, designing appropriate pedagogical programmes is one of the ways to ensure commitment and financial sustainability for a group of tutors and students, generating transformation through knowledge exchange, with possible long-term effects that are yet to be determined.