July 18, 2024
SCARP has now wrapped up its Vancouver Summer Program for 2024, and we're delighted to have made these new connections from around the world!
Students participating in SCARP's VSP tend to arrive impressed to learn that we've prepared fully-realised courses with extraordinary insights. They leave having a better understanding of the world of planning, the Canadian context, and some insights on the biggest challenges we face today.
What is UBC's Vancouver Summer Program?
A four-week experience for international undergraduate students at one of the world's top universities, UBC VSP is as much about academics as it is about social and cultural experiences. We invite students from all over the world to experimentally dip their toes not just in an academic field, but a cultural context. Arriving students nurture their academic pursuits, build friendships, and expand their perspectives of the world around them. With SCARP's vision of planning being knowledge in action - planning in partnership, how could we resist?
Our VSP courses this year and their amazing instructors
Cities Experimenting with Sustainability Transformations
Instructor: Peyvand Forouzandeh
Examine key conceptual and practical aspects of sustainability transformations with emphasis on case studies from around the world. Cities are facing unprecedented challenges as they reach for ambitious environmental targets. Environmental transformations are often interconnected with complex economic, technical, political, and social issues. Urban experiments and social innovation labs (including Vancouver, a real-world laboratory) have become increasingly common to address these challenges collaboratively.
Using the knowledge and skills acquired, explore the inner workings of these labs. Learn some common lab methods to deploy the skills and techniques applicable to uncover sustainability transformations.
Environmental Justice in Green City Planning
Instructor: Keisha Maloney
Critically engage with urban-greening initiatives in Vancouver through field visits to, for example, Pacific Spirit Park for a forest walk, to Olympic Village to assess green urbanism, and along the Arbutus Greenway to discuss sustainable transportation interventions. Ground the conceptual frameworks we developed in real world examples that we will visit together and discuss as a class. Gain experience with real world tools used to collaboratively design, develop, and evaluate sustainable projects.
Using these tools, students will develop their own proposals for green city interventions that support environmental justice outcomes.
UBC and Vancouver provide great examples of what Planning and UBC SCARP stand for, and so even our introductory tour was able to provide some great insights, such as the famous sustainability success story of the "green buildings" at UBC, including the one right next door to SCARP (one of the first green buildings in the world!) We also toured some of Vancouver's downtown core and shared some stories of how each location is itself a continuing story in planning and community-building. We also proudly described how SCARP students have participated in the Vancouver conversation through many final projects proposing transformations to the city.
One of this year's students said this on her experience:
University of the Philippines
Alessandra Nicole Baldovino
"My time at VSP with SCARP was unforgettable.
It taught me more about planning and the importance of sustainability initiatives for the future of our cities and communities, especially in the context of climate change. I learned how planning takes place in the real world and the drivers behind these changes.
It was an immersive and fun opportunity to go on field trips, getting to know classmates from different cultures, and exploring the city of Vancouver.
I will dearly look back at all the memories we made at the beautiful campus and with people from UBC.”
Some more memories
