**1. Introduction**

There is an urgent requirement to improve global environmental sustainability, including addressing critical challenges such as reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water consumption, biodiversity loss, and accelerating land and resource use [1]. In parallel, a number of interrelated or unique social sustainability challenges need to be addressed, including inequity, social cohesion, inclusion, and justice [2]. These challenges must be faced within the economic and administrative constraints, resulting in social learning and new forms of social-ecological reflectivity and sustainability governance [3,4].

Urban areas are a natural focus for efforts to improve sustainability. They account for an increasing majority (54%) of the global population [5] and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (85%); have a disproportionate share of global energy (60–80%) and resource consumption (75%); produce around 50% of global waste; and emit around 70% of global GHG emissions [6]. Urban development—defined here as the improvement or expansion of urban physical, social, administrative, and economic infrastructure—needs to be done in a sustainable manner in order to help avoid lock-in of unsustainable urban systems. There are also significant opportunities for sustainable urban development policies to provide co-benefits for population health and wellbeing [7–9]. However, to-date, very few cities have had success in meeting either local or global sustainability challenges (e.g., [10]).

**Citation:** Taylor, J.; Jokela, S.; Laine, M.; Rajaniemi, J.; Jokinen, P.; Häikiö, L.; Lönnqvist, A. Learning and Teaching Interdisciplinary Skills in Sustainable Urban Development—The Case of Tampere University, Finland. *Sustainability* **2021**, *13*, 1180. https:// doi. org/10.3390/su13031180

Academic Editor: Manuel Duarte Pinheiro Received: 22 December 2020 Accepted: 21 January 2021 Published: 23 January 2021

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Urban areas are highly complex systems, with feedbacks, interdependencies, and non-linear linkages between environmental, social, economic, and governance elements of the urban system. This complexity can lead to so-called wicked problems in planning and policy that are extremely difficult if not impossible to solve. Addressing complex societal challenges, such as those targeted for improvement in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), cannot be achieved within narrow disciplinary silos, but require a shift in development practice, and technological, social, and administrative solutions and innovations. Hence, there is a growing need for integrated skills and knowledge to address the key challenges of the Anthropocene [11]. Transdisciplinarity as a practice processes complex, real-life problems by means of methodological cooperation between disciplines, and between researchers and practical actors, and thus enables integrated learning between the scientific community and society [12,13].

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has a critical role in providing transdisciplinary skills, with universities having an important role as drivers of sustainable change. However, in education, transdisciplinary teaching of Sustainable Urban Development (SUD) has not seen significant adoption into the established curricula so far [14] and there is limited experience on how to develop and facilitate transdisciplinary teaching of SUD in practice. Therefore, the aims of this paper are to:


To achieve the first two aims, we review and summarize current literature in ESD and analyze how SUD education has been implemented in HEIs worldwide. To achieve the third, we describe as a case study the development of a new bachelor's degree program in SUD at Tampere University, Finland, which aims to equip future sustainable urban development technology, social, and administrative professionals with the skills and holistic understanding to enact sustainable change in a global context. Finally, we reflect on the degree program, illustrating how learning outcomes and pedagogical practices identified in the literature review are integrated into the curriculum, as well as exploring the perspectives of students and practical experiences of lecturers following the programs first implementation.
