The Smart and Sustainable Cities degree led by the Trinity College Dublin School of Natural Sciences and delivered by staff from all faculties across the university, in collaboration with leading scientific researchers, and national and international organisations with specialist skills. The growth and development of cities in the 21st Century presents significant challenges, including sustainable development, the planning and design of urban space and social wellbeing. With thousands of smart-city initiatives around the world, smart urbanism is now one of the dominant models of urban development.

 

Projects for smart cities involve the regeneration of existing urban areas as well as the creation of large new settlements. This has significant implications for the many environmental, social and economic systems that underpin the planet. Smart-city initiatives have a multi-dimensional nature. As projects that are aimed at improving urban spaces, they are deeply connected to issues of urbanisation and urban planning. Because of their focus on technological innovation, the development of smart cities goes beyond the science of the city and is also the product of studies in computer science and engineering. Moreover, once implemented, smart interventions take place not upon a blank canvas, but rather within complex ecological and social systems whose dynamics must be taken into account in order to avoid environmental degradation and biodiversity loss.

 

This new M.Sc. in Smart and Sustainable Cities approaches the study of smart and sustainable urbanism by drawing from the research-based expertise of leading scholars from Trinity’s Energy, Environment and Emerging Technologies Institute (E3). The programme, which is the first dedicated programme of its kind, will provide students with an in-depth understanding of smart and sustainable cities, using (a) the tools of urban geography and planning to examine the spatial formation of smart cities; (b methods in engineering and computer science to analyse the functions and applications of smart technologies, and (c) insights from ecology to explore the environmental impact of both ‘smart-city projects’ and wider transformations of contemporary cities. The programme is thus of interest to a wide range of students from different backgrounds.