Course launch: Sustainability Essentials for Built Environment Professionals

[00:00:09] Welcome to The Green Urbanist, the podcast for urbanists fighting climate change. I'm Ross.

[00:00:24] Hello everyone, welcome to the podcast. In this episode I just want to announce that my course

[00:00:32] Sustainability Essentials for Built Environment Professionals is now live. I'm super excited this is

[00:00:38] now available for you to book on to, to enroll in and start your learning journey in sustainability

[00:00:45] essentially. I've been talking about this course in the last couple of episodes so hopefully you've

[00:00:51] heard about it but if you haven't I'll just give you a quick overview now. What I really just want to say

[00:00:57] first of all is that the link to the course page so you can go and learn more about it and actually

[00:01:02] enroll in it is in the episode description the first link that you see in the episode description

[00:01:08] so you know feel free to go and do that. The other thing to say is that there's a 50% discount on the

[00:01:14] course price just for the next five days until the evening of the 22nd of November so I'm launching

[00:01:24] the course now for the first time and I'm putting this huge discount on it basically just because I

[00:01:28] want to get it out there. I want lots of people jumping on it and getting started and I don't want

[00:01:34] price necessarily to be a barrier for people so it is you know very affordably priced. It'll be about

[00:01:42] 60 euro about 55 pounds something like that. The amount of VAT or tax that you pay changes depending

[00:01:51] on what country you're in so you go to the sales page and you'll see that the price will be something

[00:01:55] really specific like 62 euro and five cents or something like that. That's just because you have

[00:02:00] to pay a certain amount of VAT on these things. Anyway that's not important. What's important is that

[00:02:05] this is the 50% price. It's really good value for what is the course I wish I had when I was first

[00:02:14] getting started five years ago on my sustainability journey and the reason I made it is because I know

[00:02:21] a lot of you listening are maybe students or you're earlier in your career or you're even later in your

[00:02:28] career but you're just having a rethink about what your priorities are for your career going forward

[00:02:32] whether you're an architect or a planner or a landscape architect or some sort of built environment

[00:02:37] professional and you want to really take sustainability and climate action seriously and

[00:02:44] bring it into your work in a meaningful way which is fantastic which I'm sure that's probably why

[00:02:49] what brought you to the podcast in the first place. And there's about 100 episodes of this podcast now so

[00:02:56] there's lots of good learning to be had and there's great conversations on here and I've broken down lots of key

[00:03:02] concepts but the thing is 100 plus you know the 100 episodes that's about 90 hours of content so what

[00:03:09] I've done with this course is instead of just you know giving you hours and hours of more stuff to work

[00:03:15] your way through I've refined down a lot of my learnings from the past five years into a course that's

[00:03:22] about two hours in length total a little bit more than two hours and it's broken down into bite-sized

[00:03:27] video lessons. So all the videos are about 15 minutes long I don't think any of them are more than 20

[00:03:33] minutes so it's the kind of thing that you can watch on your lunch break or if you have a gap in

[00:03:38] meetings or just you know in the evening after work and you just want to do a little bit of training

[00:03:43] and get your head around some of these concepts. You can also sit down and just you know watch it all

[00:03:48] in one go if you like but good to take breaks to let these things settle into your mind

[00:03:54] a little bit and what does it cover well the course is really an introductory

[00:04:02] course on urban sustainability so it's geared very much towards people like you people like me

[00:04:08] built environment professionals who know you know you know your craft I'm not going to teach you how to

[00:04:13] be an architect or how to be a planner you know how to do that yourself but maybe you don't have a

[00:04:18] background in sustainability maybe that wasn't part of your education maybe you don't have colleagues

[00:04:23] or collaborators that you can learn from and so this is your way of getting your foot in the door

[00:04:29] of getting a big picture understanding of the important concepts in urban sustainability and then I provide

[00:04:37] in the course some exercises and some direction for how you can start to make this make these learnings

[00:04:43] more specific for you how can you can start to bring this into your profession and your unique approach

[00:04:49] as a professional and there's lots of links to podcast episodes videos articles external websites we can go

[00:04:58] and learn more about particular topics so you have a bit of a path forward after the course as well

[00:05:04] and there's actually lots more learning you can do just based on the resources that I provide

[00:05:09] in the course going forward so hopefully that is makes for a really good start to your

[00:05:16] sustainability journey rather than just attending sort of random webinars watching random youtube videos

[00:05:22] reading you know industry reports here and there which is all good stuff to do but if you don't have

[00:05:29] that sort of generalist understanding of the big picture of sustainability to start with it could be

[00:05:34] hard to know how all these bits of information fit together so I'll just tell you a little bit about

[00:05:39] how the course is structured it starts off with an introduction to some climate science so it starts

[00:05:45] off by basically telling you climate change you know what is it what are the main causes of greenhouse gas

[00:05:52] emissions that are causing climate change why it's important for built environment professionals to be

[00:05:57] on this and taking action on this and also a little bit about what are the impacts of climate change

[00:06:03] that we are expecting and why it's so urgent that we both mitigate climate change by reducing emissions

[00:06:11] but also start adapting to climate change because you know the world around us is changing we're getting

[00:06:16] more extreme weather the weather patterns are changing so we need to be adapting our urban environments

[00:06:22] and our buildings in response to that so that's sort of the you know that's really what that first lesson

[00:06:28] is all about it's just giving you that key information after that it moves on to much more action oriented

[00:06:34] stuff what are the the ideas and the concepts that you can bring into your work the very first two

[00:06:39] lessons are about net zero carbon I then move on to talking a little bit about ethics and then into

[00:06:46] regenerative design which is such a fascinating topic and something I'm really really interested in and

[00:06:53] something I see becoming much more mainstream in the coming years so you know really now is the time

[00:06:57] to jump on to regenerative design get ahead become you know be an early adopter because this is really

[00:07:04] the direction we all need to be heading in if you're if you're not familiar with regenerative design

[00:07:08] it's basically about going beyond net zero carbon and net zero harm to actually having a net positive

[00:07:15] impact on energy systems water ecology and society around us moving on from that some of the topics

[00:07:23] that later lessons get into our climate adaptation already mentioned how important that is so I talk

[00:07:29] about a couple of ways you can approach climate adaptation in your work closely linked to that but but

[00:07:36] but also different is the biodiversity crisis and urban ecology and how we can as urbanists in whatever

[00:07:43] role we're doing can play an important role in boosting biodiversity which which also has climate

[00:07:48] adaptation and resilience benefits these are quite linked together a lesson that I think people have

[00:07:54] been really enjoying is the one on circular economy which ties together lots of the the topics that I talk

[00:08:00] about in the course so circular economy is a great one with some really tangible tips for how you can start

[00:08:06] incorporating that into your into your work it's not you know it doesn't have to be the sort of lofty

[00:08:11] theoretical idea it's actually some really practical things you can do and I get into that in this module

[00:08:17] and then I finish up with two modules one is about how sustainable change happens in the real world

[00:08:22] and this one is maybe a little bit outside of you know your direct work as built environment

[00:08:27] professionals but I think it gives you a good grounding in understanding you know why is it taking so

[00:08:33] long for electric vehicles to to take off why is it taking so long for renewable energy to become

[00:08:39] you know as as dominant as it is becoming now and then how quickly can change happen you know things

[00:08:45] like tipping points and what it takes for changes in the systems to happen I think that's a really

[00:08:51] important thing for us to understand and you know to to understand that even if change feels slow

[00:08:58] we need to keep pushing and actually eventually you can hit a tipping point and change can happen very

[00:09:04] very rapidly and then I finish up with a module called how we're winning stories of hope bit of cheesy

[00:09:10] title but really this idea that actually there's so much so many great things happening in the world

[00:09:15] and there's so many great case studies at the international national and city scales that it's

[00:09:22] really worth knowing about and I want to finish on a couple of quick case studies and examples I find

[00:09:29] really inspiring to really motivate you and to arm you with some of those examples so you can show to

[00:09:34] people hey look these things do happen in the world there's examples here look here and we can do the

[00:09:39] same you know we can do the same here as well then finally the the very last module is just a wrap-up

[00:09:47] and it's about the next steps for you to meaningful climate action in your career so if any and all of

[00:09:54] that sounds interesting check out the link in the description below I think you're really going to

[00:09:59] enjoy the course you can learn more on that page and you can also enroll straight from that page there

[00:10:06] is also a free lesson on that page if you scroll down there's a video there and that is a video that's

[00:10:12] taken directly from one of the lessons in the course about net zero carbon made simple it's an

[00:10:17] introduction to the concept of net zero carbon so you can watch that and you can get a sense of my

[00:10:21] teaching style and the style of the videos and see if it you know if it works for you

[00:10:26] so do check that out and if you have any questions you know just email me if you're unsure if you wanted

[00:10:33] to find out more about the course just email me it's ross at green urbanist pod.com thanks so much

[00:10:43] guys for joining me on this journey I know it's been a bit different the last couple of episodes I did a

[00:10:50] little mini course where I shared a couple of free excerpts from the course and I've been talking

[00:10:56] about the course a lot I don't want to be sort of selling this at you all the time but I just think

[00:11:01] there's such an unmet need out there for this sort of introductory training so I want to you know really

[00:11:06] give it a boost these two weeks and just get it out to everyone who needs it if you if it's not for

[00:11:13] you but if you have colleagues or friends who you think it could be useful for please do share it with

[00:11:17] them that would really help me just get the word out and I'll be back next week of the week after

[00:11:23] with some of my regular programming some good conversations some good podcast episodes will be

[00:11:29] coming out the next couple of weeks and I'm really excited to share with you so thanks everyone see you soon