Problem structuring in urban science education: Why, what, and how

Abstract

Urban science is an emerging and transdisciplinary field that attracts deep interest in planning degree programs from educational institutions worldwide. Urban science education emphasizes the science of cities and urban information technology by integrating design, engineering, system science, spatial science, behavioral and social science, decision science, and other disciplines. The increasing complexity of urban systems creates significant pedagogical challenges for urban science education, particularly in problem structuring, which is the process of structuring, or defining, (a) the scope of the problem, (b) the potential ways for addressing the problem, and (c) suitable criteria for judging solutions to the problem. In this article, we describe the theoretical foundations of problem structuring in relation to urban science education and explain why it is difficult to teach. In response to this pedagogical challenge, we propose DIMES (Describe, Inquire, Model, Extract, and State), a novel domain-agnostic method combining design thinking and systems thinking developed for problem structuring in any level of higher education. We describe how the DIMES method can be integrated into urban science curricula with relation to critical considerations for teaching urban science problem structuring, the fast-evolving smart city development, and the disruptive impact of generative artificial intelligence on urban science education. Finally, we provide our thoughts on potential future studies with DIMES in urban science learning settings.