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12/06/2021 | Campus-Meldung

Teachers from Cuba visit Kassel | Exchange on climate resilience

Until mid-December, ten teachers from the University of Santa Clara, Cuba are guests at FB06 I ASL of the University of Kassel. Within the framework of the cooperation project, which will run from 2020 to 2023 and is funded by the DAAD, an interdisciplinary team from Santa Clara together with teachers from Kassel will tackle the first building block of the cooperation: the development of a curriculum for climate-resilient urban renewal. This is to result in a "Diplomado" as an instrument for building up expertise in dealing with the consequences of climate change in the sustainable renewal of the - in the majority - medium-sized cities in Cuba.

Image: Kassel University
f.l.t.r. Roberto Castro, Pedro Martínez, Dr. José Chávez, Cecilia Valdés, Dr. Anabel Hurtado, Dr. Ray Espinosa, Dr. Ginley Durán, Miguel Angel Fernández, Heinz-Jürgen Achterberg, Mark Weingart (both Foundation 5+ Landscape)

Funding project: Curricular development for climate resilient urban renewal as a joint project of the University of Kassel and the Universidad Central de Las Villas, Santa Clara (Cuba), funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

"The teaching staff of the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Universidad Central de Las Villas (UCLV) shall be trained and enabled to educate experts for the upcoming (esp. climate resilience related) planning tasks. At the same time, however, this is not a one-way street, because although the issues of climate resilience are also becoming increasingly important in Germany, there is only a rudimentary broad-based training in this area. Faculty 6 has some expertise in this area," explains Prof. Dr. Harald Kegler, head of the cooperation and of the Urban Planning and Planning History Department at the University of Kassel's Planning Theory/ Urban Renewal Division. The exchange is supported by the long-time partner in the cooperation with the Cuban partners, Heike Vollmann.

During the current visit to Kassel, the focus will be on questions of resilience theory, citizen participation, infrastructure development, but also concrete projects of urban renewal as well as the exchange with students on teaching formats. Corona conditions permitting, a return visit is planned for the coming year, during which the first components of the curriculum to be developed will be tested. This will be followed by further work on the three goals of the university cooperation project, which will be worked on until the end of 2023:

  1. Curriculum development and implementation
  2. Development of professional expertise at the University of Kassel on issues of climate-smart urban development in Cuba
  3. Establishment of development-relevant professional networks between UNIK, UCLV and planning-relevant institutions and associations.

Due to Corona, the exchange could not take place since the start of the project in 2020. However, since a personal exchange is indispensable, the meeting will now take place in Kassel with pandemic-related restrictions.