Sustainable Eucor Cities?

Students develop city tours with a focus on sustainability

In February, around 20 students from different disciplines at the Eucor universities of Strasbourg, Freiburg and Basel worked together intensively on the state of sustainable development in their cities in a hybrid block course at the University of Basel in which they organised city walks by students for students. The results of the course are sustainable urban explorations in the three cities or so-called SDG Walks.

Sustainable development in the Upper Rhine region: The 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations as an analytical tool

Marc Frick and Fabia Willi from the Eucor-EPICUR team at the University of Basel, who were responsible for the course, gave the participants a task that was as challenging as it was open-ended. As experts on their cities and the reality of their lives, the students were asekd to analyse the status quo of sustainability in their cities using the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.

Sustainability from a trinational perspective: Which strategies work where, why and with whose support?

The students approached the SDGs individually and in groups and then applied them directly to their cities. The aim was to design an appealing SDG city exploration for a selected target group and to address the following questions: How can the SDGs be used to analyse developments towards sustainability in our cities? Where can grievances be uncovered, where can good solutions be found? In what ways can each and every individual take action to implement the SDGs?

The trinational exchange between the students, who reflected on their local observations with their fellow students from the other cities, had a formative influence on the discussion of the individual SDGs. Which strategies work both regionally and nationally? What impact do local decisions made in one of the cities have on the development of sustainability in the larger context of the trinational region? And which stakeholders need to be involved when developing solutions that do justice to the diversity of living models and realities in our cities?

From theory to practice: student SDG walks as part of Basel Sustainability Week

The block course ended on 16 February 2024, but the students are continuing to work on their city tours. The results will be presented in the individual cities over the course of the summer semester. The first city will be Basel, where the student SDG walks will be presented as part of the University’s Sustainability Week on 23 March 2024. In addition, a workshop format by students for students is planned to encourage students in the cities of the two university alliances Eucor and EPICUR to engage with sustainability issues.