Sustainability assessments can support informed decision-making, enabling humans to make an optimal contribution to sustainable development. Although sustainability assessments are widely used, several issues persist: What constitutes a "good" method for evaluating the sustainability of urban systems?  How can we decide upon what is sustainable, specifically in the context of urban systems? What role do normative and systemic aspects play in assessing sustainability?

This course is designed to provide students with methodological and theoretical content on sustainability issues, enabling them to conduct well-conceived sustainability assessments for cities worldwide. At the end of the course, students will be able to develop their own sustainability assessment using the Sustainability Solution Space methodology. Some of the key questions of the course are listed below.

• What is a sustainability assessment?
• What are the key sustainability issues in urban areas?
• What are the systemic, normative, and procedural aspects of sustainability assessments?
• How can we develop policy options using a sustainability assessment

• Sustainability assessment of urban systems
• Sustainability issues in urban systems
• Systemic, normative and procedural aspects of sustainability assessment
• Sustainability solution space
• Interdisciplinaryy work
• Science-policy interface

• Assess / Evaluate a series of options from a sustainability perspective
• Design a study in which the assessment method can be applied in a meaningful way
• Distinguish between systemic, normative and procedural aspects of sustainability
• Apply the sustainability solution space methodology to a real world problem
• Distinguish between systemic, normative and procedural aspects of sustainability
• Apply the methods relevant for sustainability analysis to a specific problem
• Apply the multi criteria decision analysis method to assess sustainability options
• Formulate a critical perspective on sustainability assessment

• Communicate effectively with professionals from other disciplines.
• Make an oral presentation.
• Identify the different roles that are involved in well-functioning teams and assume different roles, including leadership roles.
• Write a scientific or technical report.
• Assess one's own level of skill acquisition, and plan their on-going learning goals.
• Access and evaluate appropriate sources of information.
• Continue to work through difficulties or initial failure to find optimal solutions.
• Demonstrate the capacity for critical thinking

Lectures, exercises, group project with the presentation of a poster, flipped classroom sessions.

This course offers a series of tools to adapt to students' learning patterns by alternating learning modes, and by offering a wide variety of teaching materials (slides, scientific articles, MOOC extracts, quizzes).

To anchor the questions and answers formulated throughout the course, professionals are invited to share their experiences.

We expect students to attend to the lectures and the exercises offered. The lectures and exercises will be closely interlinked and taught openly within the three hours allocated to the course. They are expected to develop their own case study, perform a sustainability assessment and a critical review of another sustainability assessment.

The students will be evaluated as follows:

• Group project:
  • Development of a poster and presentation (30%)
• Critical evaluation of other projects (10%)
• Final exam (60%)

30% of the final mark will be determined by the group work and 70% (final exam and critical assessment) will be individual.

Videos, articles, slides will be uploaded on Moodle.

References will be shared throughout the course to provide additional material. The course is based on the following book, which is freely available from EPFL.

Binder CR, Wyss R, Massaro E, eds. In: Sustainability Assessment of Urban Systems. Cambridge University Press; 2020:i-ii.

Access here

• Find the reference at the Libraryhttps://slsp-epfl.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=course_code,contains,%22ENV-461%202025-2026%22&tab=41SLSP_EPF_MyInst_and_CI&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&vid=41SLSP_EPF:prod

Will be uploaded to moodle

• https://go.epfl.ch/ENV-461https://go.epfl.ch/ENV-461