Sustainability and the City: CCNY’s New M.S. Program

Abstract

Reforming curricula has been likened to relocating graveyards. The implication, presumably, is that cur ricular reform should be done only when necessary, should be carried out respectfully, and demands a good deal of time and care. The creation of a new Sustainability in the Urban Environment program at City College of New York (CCNY)—a program that will graduate its first class in June 2011—certainly exhibited these characteristics. Given the dramatically increasing interest in sustainability and cleantech—in the academic world, the corporate world, the media world, and the planet in general—some sort of serious academic offering in sustainability seemed a virtual necessity. Of course it had to be done respectfully, given that much of the terrain of sustainability was at least partially covered, in differing ways, by existing programs and/or courses in environmental studies, earth sciences, environmental engineering, economics, management, law, and policy. We had to make clear that a new master’s degree program in Sustainability is not in any sense a replacement of existing disciplines, but rather a new focal point that draws heavily from the insights of these existing disciplines and juxtaposes these insights in ways that can be extremely useful in working toward solutions of real-world problems.