Outline

What is the College of Urban Sciences?

When creation of a new college that meets the needs of the twenty-first century was discussed, Yokohama National University took three social backgrounds into account; globalization, innovation, and the metropolis. On the basis of our academic achievement with advantages of ‘coexistence with risks*’ and ‘education and research in cities as a field’, we reorganized field of arts and social sciences to plan and design urban society for people, cultures, and societies in the cities. We then created a new college ‘the College of Urban Sciences’ for coexistence with the broad implied risks to the natural and social environment. This college also provides study and scientific analysis of the challenges related to planning, design, operation, and maintenance of buildings and urban infrastructure that form cities.

To develop individuals who will lead such cities in the future, we established four departments covering humanities and science; Department of Urban and Social Collaboration, Department of Architecture and Building Science, Department of Civil Engineering, and Department of Risk Management and Environmental Science. In this way, new knowledge will be developed.

* coexistence with risks: A new academic discipline that deals with how to manage the balance between risks and rewards.

Why Urban Sciences?

Urban sciences is an academic discipline that tackles scientifically such key themes as what cities should be in the future.

Cities are places where countless people live and work, where diverse activities take place, and where a variety of phenomena occur. While the United Nations predicts that 66 percent of the world’s population will concentrate in cities by 2050, it is an important key to consider future direction of cities to solve a lot of problems that humanity and the Earth are facing.

By establishing a new college for scientific study of cities, YNU trains individuals who will challenge the future of cities from a wide viewpoint of humanities and sciences, and who will lead various fields in the world as well as in Japan.


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