DPU at the UCL CALT Conference – 3rd April 2014

How do planners and ordinary citizens learn the city? How do we learn through maps and mapping? What capacities are activated / generated by such learning?

Adriana Allen and Rita Lambert shared the mode of knowledge co-production developed through the practice module of the MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development at the Development Planning Unit. 

The MSc practice module is based on two action-learning platforms - ‘Water Justice in Latin American Cities’ and ‘the Heuristics of Mapping Urban Environmental Change’ (both of which were initiated by the DPU) - and on the tacit and codified knowledge produced by local partners overseas. Hence the module is designed to bring together different communities of practice – namely international postgraduate students from diverse backgrounds and experiences together with academics, local partners and community members - to undertake research that transcends the academic confines, and produces transformative knowledge and action through socially and spatially embedded learning.

Their presentation examines the process by which different types of knowledge users and producers come together in new ways that expand the possibilities for learning, action and further research and defy the conventional boundaries between teaching and learning, knowing and experiencing and understanding and acting.