Working Group for Sustainable Cities at Harvard University: Activities

Program Description | Core Members | Activities | WGSC in the News

The Working Group for Sustainable Cities at Harvard (WGSC), an interdisciplinary grass-roots group at Harvard, seeks to develop new ways of understanding and approaching economic, social, and environmental sustainability as it relates to urban regeneration and to widen the view of what is typically thought of as "Sustainability.”

WGSC Executive Education

The Working Group for Sustainable Cities hosted its first annual program on Sustainable Cities from March 22-23, 2011, through the Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s Executive Education Program. The course is called:

“Urban Sustainability: Developing Healthy Cities”

    Course Objectives

1.) Have Harvard academics and sustainability professionals present their expertise, covering 3 major spheres of sustainability: Environmental, Social, and Economic.

2.) Create links between purportedly disparate silos of knowledge and illustrate how sustainable thinking is integrated, cross-disciplinary thinking.

3.) Deconstruct and explain the core components of sustainability to senior-level decision-makers in the built   environment with a view to breaking down collaborative barriers.

4.) Teach a holistic understanding of what sustainability is at an urban scale. What kinds of initiatives are sustainable? Who leads them? How is their sustainability measured? How are they funded? Defined? Designed? Regulated? 

5.) Go beyond the more obvious “sustainable” proposals, such as technological innovation, and make evident the more subtle, social elements of sustainable practice that are often missed, misunderstood, or hidden in plain sight.

WGSC Mayors Luncheon Series

The Mayors Luncheons bring together selected Mayors and WGSC core members and affiliates for a series of informal lunch-time meetings at the Harvard Institute of Politics. The goal of these sessions is to learn about how different cities’ sustainability agendas work and the issues confronting mayors, so we can make informed decisions in building our programs.

As a start, we have started asking mayors from local cities in the Greater Boston area, as well as former mayors in the Harvard community, to participate in a dialogue with Harvard faculty and associates that will help us craft a national Mayors Roundtable on Sustainability (MRS) program.

Real-time input on what the mayors are facing today is an invaluable resource in building a structure for this program, which includes the following goals:

1.) Help the WGSC shape a national Mayors Roundtable on Sustainability (MRS) program by learning common issues mayors face in creating or administering their cities’ Sustainability Agendas

2.) Determine Mayors for possible inclusion in greater MRS programming

3.) Create a lasting connection to Harvard for the mayors in the WGSC series: a virtual portal from Mayor to University (and back)

4.) Share access to information gathered in the Mayors Luncheon Series so cities may see where they are in relation to others and get new ideas

5.) Create a “community” of local mayors - others they can access for help, advice, and comparing notes as they build their sustainable urban agenda

WGSC Mayors Roundtable Series

The WGSC Mayors’ Sustainability Roundtable series will combine the efforts and practical experience of city Mayors with the academic knowledge of affiliated faculty at Harvard and professionals in practice.  Both groups will be dedicated to incorporating sustainability into their areas of expertise, ideally in under-served communities but also by bringing knowledge and expertise from more affluent communities to the table. 

The roundtable series would introduce fresh research and effective thinking from Harvard scholars to urban policy-makers, while providing researchers with real-world experience.  The series would foster a robust, interdisciplinary exchange of ideas between practice and academia.  These face-to-face meetings will provide a forum to pose questions, come up with new ideas, test approaches, and ultimately solve problems.

WGSC Knowledge Platform

The Working Group for Sustainable Cities (WGSC) at Harvard University draws strength from its goal of bringing experts from different academic and professional disciplines to table with Mayors and civic leaders to devise sustainable solutions for cities.

Too often, academicians and experts in practice work in “silos” rather than collaborating; the WGSC is dedicated to overcoming these barriers.  For example, environmental researchers working with architects and social scientists can address the root causes of issues from multiple perspectives.

The mission of the WGSC is to turn research into practice by sharing and distributing knowledge for use by civic leaders and planners. The WGSC seeks to develop a Knowledge Platform to provide a framework for collaboration and a site for information dissemination, comprised of three elements:

1.) Harvard Sustainability Resource Directory: designed to include all Harvard members researching or teaching in the fields of sustainability and cities.

2.) WGSC Participant Directory will expand the directory to include participants outside the Harvard community, providing the WGSC with an ever-evolving network of sustainability practitioners and academicians.

3.) WGSC Case Builder constructs an organized compilation of information ("cases") from WGSC forums.  This portal will provide shared access to information gathered by the working group and extended participants.

Uniting public, private, and academic sectors towards a goal of urban sustainability is essential to harnessing the personal and public investments needed to rebuild our cities.  The Knowledge Platform will facilitate such collaboration and help the WGSC synthesize and disseminate knowledge to aid in the practice and implementation of sustainability.