Special Issue on Smart, Sustainable and Just: Higher Education and the Remaking of the Right to the City

摘要

Thinking and acting sustainably involves, among other things, being able to make connections, working inter-professionally, crossing disciplinary boundaries and thinking holisti-cally. This invariably means applying a systems approach to understanding the dynamic interrelationship between human action and the planetary environment inevitably involving some of the intellectual challenges that complexity and chaos theory throws in. But in practice many of us still work deep within specific professional or disciplinary silos that sometimes act as a break on policies and practices that could fashion a more sustainable world. What is of utmost importance is being able to transcend, and transform established ways of doing things, to move way beyond comfortable habits and routines and to vigorously, but constructively, critique initiatives that fail to make the necessary connections. In other words, everything is in some way related to everything else. Higher education is no exception; quite the opposite. Its role is, or at least should be, to help make these connections real, apparent and obvious.