During the summer of 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, I took a class called Geography 406: Sustainable Cities. This course is normally part of the Northern European Urban Sustainability Field School – in which students travel to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands to learn about innovation in urban sustainability across Europe. The summer field school was cancelled due to Covid-19 restrictions, but Dr. Owens ran one part of the course in an online, community-engaged format.
This course was extremely interesting in terms of both the course content and the community-engaged projects. After learning about ways in which we can create more livable, inclusive, playful, and sustainable cities, we were taken on a virtual field trip around Copenhagen by the founder of Cycling Without Age. On this live tour, we saw different sustainable, innovative infrastructure all around Copenhagen, all through the lens of a cyclist in the city. Copenhagen had just lifted their Covid-19 restrictions when this bike tour took place, so we watched as people reconnected over glasses of wine on the street corners after a period of isolation. It was a pretty emotional experience to see people in big groups hugging their friends while we were stuck on the other side of the computer screen. Although this bike tour made me extremely jealous of those who could be in such a cool, vibrant city while we were all on lockdown in our homes, it was really wonderful to experience Copenhagen as ‘firsthand’ as we possibly could. It was so nice to be able to connect with people across the world while being socially isolated, especially through exciting ideas of sustainability and building resilient, happy communities.
Cycling Without Age – “Ole” (https://cyclingwithoutage.org/)
Our final task for this course was to complete a community-engaged research project with one of three community partners – NetZero Victoria, Island Transportation Organization, or the City of Victoria Climate Action team. I chose to work with NetZero Victoria, which is an initiative by Wendy and Don Fienberg to renovate their 1912 home to make it net-zero in the most sustainable way possible. For this project, each student group took on different tasks, such as videos about the project and maps of sustainable resources in Victoria. My partner and I, after consulting with Wendy, decided to create infographics about the journey of creating this net-zero home, focusing on demolition, waste management and solar panel installation.
Although I was really interested in the course content, when I first enrolled in Geog 406 I did not have super high expectations since I had never taken an online course before. I thought that this class would be a good chance to quickly get some credits finished over the summer and learn about a few interesting topics. I wished that I was actually travelling around Europe, but I thought that I might as well do some school work while we’re all hauled up in our bedrooms. After the first few classes, I was surprised by how much I was enjoying the course content. Being able to connect with other students and the community partners during the lockdown made my days a lot brighter and more meaningful. Learning about how we can contribute to creating resilient, livable cities was so relevant during the first Covid-19 lockdown, as the nature of cities started to change due to people having to stay at home and walk almost everywhere. Everyone’s worlds got a lot smaller during this time, and many people were living a much more ‘local’ life within their communities. It was so exciting to learn about building sustainable communities from the ground up during such a pivotal moment all over the world, and then be able to use those ideas we discussed in class in our community-based projects. Although it wasn’t quite as fun as travelling around five European countries with a bunch of your friends and learning about sustainable innovations, this online course provided an amazing opportunity to learn about creating better futures for our cities and allowed us to help community members in the process.