Urban Sustainability

Course Description 

VIP38XG: The Urban Sustainability VIP is a cross-disciplinary course that develops solutions to environmental challenges in modern cities. Students investigate innovations that support sustainable urban development across buildings, transportation, energy systems, water, waste, public health and climate resilience. Through research, campus or community projects, or competitions students apply approaches from engineering, architecture, urban planning, data science, and sustainability assessment to advance decarbonization, circular economy strategies, resource efficiency, urban livability, resilience, and equity.  1 credit

Example Projects

  • Engage in campus climate action planning using building data, sensors, energy modeling, and automation systems to investigate energy conservation measures and decarbonization pathways.
  • Reimagine the Lower East Side and New York City through research, modeling, and analysis of deep energy retrofits, renewable energy systems (including solar, wind, and geothermal), battery storage, grid interactivity, blue-green infrastructure, urban heat island mitigation, and other innovative sustainability and resilience strategies. Partnering with local community organizations and government agencies is encouraged.
  • Explore environmental engineering research topics related to the built environment, including water quality sensors, wastewater treatment, and stormwater management.
  • Collaborate across disciplines to design a sustainable infrastructure project that integrates engineering systems with natural processes to address a real-world resilience challenge, developed in alignment with the 2027 ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition.

Instructors

Melody Baglione, melody.baglione@cooper.edu, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Coordinator
John Rundell, john.rundell@cooper.edu , Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering
David Jaehun Kim, david.jaehunkim@cooper.edu, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering
Jeong Eun Ahn, jeong.ahn@cooper.edu, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.