Site and Project Development

Abstract

The focus of the lecture Site & Project Development is on larger contiguous areas or sites and their urban, open space and infrastructural development. In this course, students work on a semester exercise in which they "develop" a specific large-scale project from practice and evaluate it economically, strategically and in terms of feasibility.

Objective

Students in this course will pursue the following learning objectives: - Investigate and understand a given concrete project area and identify, evaluate and articulate the current problems and relevant issues within this area. - Consolidate their knowledge in the essential topics of site & project development and apply this in a well-founded, argued and creative manner to address the task at hand. - Organize and structure themselves while acquiring responsibilities in their interdisciplinary project teams. The teams consist of three to five fellow students that must develop innovative, viable and resilient concepts for a real project development in a given area. Their considerations should be presented in written form (project report) and in linguistic-visual form (final presentation). At the end of the course, the students critically reflect on their experiences with the group work process together with the course instructors. - Acquire methodological knowledge in location & market analysis, 3D visualization of a project as well as in the financial assessment of a large-scale real estate project and use this knowledge to justify their considerations and evaluate their proposal. - Development and strengthening of their individual position as planners (spatial, urban, transport planners, etc.) in relation to the questions formulated in the proposed project within the field of Site & Development as well as within their own discipline.

Content

The lecture is divided into several thematic sections analogous to the essential topics of Site & Project Development. The students are accompanied both in the semester exercise and in the individual lectures by a large number of external guest speakers from the praxis-field, which means that the lecture will not only thematically examine the relevant areas of Site & Project Development, but also will offer the students exclusive, practice-oriented insights. The relevant methodological knowledge for the semester exercise is imparted and, due to the proximity to practice, the students gain exclusive insights into possible professional fields of activity. In this lecture, students apply their already acquired and newly learned skills, especially in interdisciplinary teams, and work on an exciting, motivating and relevant question from the practice. Major topics covered in the lecture include: - Urban planning - Location and market analysis - Real estate development, financing and valuation - Project development and decision-making from the perspective of investors - Open space design and landscape architecture - Sustainable building and sustainability certification - Mobility, parking issues, travel models - Cooperative planning and participation processes, mediation - Gendered planning in project development - Inner development & urban quality Parallel to the lecture series, students work in interdisciplinary teams on a real-life task. In the course of the semester exercise, the lecture material is deepened and what has been learned is applied. The students visit the project area at the beginning of the semester as part of an excursion. Specific large-scale projects such as the Gaswerkareal Bern, the Sihl-Manegg Areal Zurich (Greencity) or the Areal Alter Pilatusmarkt (Nidfeld) Lucerne will be dealt with. For the possible development of the given site, visions are developed by the students on the basis of a comprehensive location and market analysis and a utilization concept is developed. In the process, the students are accompanied by experts and regularly discuss their ideas and proposed solutions with their supervisors.

Resources