Monday, August 14
Kate Ascher, Milstein Professor of Urban Development at GSAPP, and Andrew Smyth, Professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Columbia Engineering, have been awarded a Cross-Disciplinary Frontiers Courses grant by Columbia University’s Office of the Provost. This program, launched in 2022, supports the development of innovative new courses that span multiple schools. The courses, which will launch in the 2023-2024 academic year, intend to pool scholarly strengths across Columbia’s 17 schools to create new fields of knowledge and solve societal challenges.
Their course, “The Future City: Transforming Urban Infrastructure,” will introduce students to technological innovations that are helping cities around the world create healthier, safer, more equitable, and more resilient futures. Its foundation is based on two sets of traditional disciplines – architecture, urban design, and real estate development, and structural, civil, and mechanical engineering – but also incorporates newer areas of study – such as data analytics and smart communication technologies – that offer opportunities for major advances in the quality of municipal service delivery.