Discussion Session Focus: Progress and action on sustainable cities require skills, mindsets, and collaborations that enable the understanding of cities which are complex systems that experience a lot of the wicked problems of our times. These skills include systems thinking, sustainability mindset, interdisciplinary knowledge and collaboration, an understanding of complexity, and tolerance to uncertainty. This workshop focuses on “interdisciplinary knowledge and collaboration” and engages participants in hands-on activities to create experiential learning for interdisciplinarity to understand cities and to collaborate more meaningfully and more comprehensively.

Background: Interdisciplinary knowledge weaves together the methods and tools of several disciplines at the start of collaborations and when introducing new concepts. The perspectives from multiple disciplines create the basis of interdisciplinary projects. Drawing from different disciplines does not make a project inherently interdisciplinary; but rather the integration of methods and ideas from these disciplines in a meaningful manner is at the core of interdisciplinary thinking. In an interdisciplinary project, team members endeavour to find common ground for their project while collaborating together. An interdisciplinary project creates a newfound perspective that would not have been possible with knowledge from only one discipline. In interdisciplinary projects, individuals are still experts in their own fields and gain an awareness and understanding of the integration of other methods, which makes this synergy of skills on a project more than the sum of its parts.
The theory and framework used in this workshop on interdisciplinarity is based on the paper by Nissani (1994) as the basis for conceptualizing disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge.

Activities: Workshop activities proposed are scaffolded in the following manner:
- Theory on interdisciplinarity
- Cities as complex systems
- LEGO activity to visualize different types of collaborations
- Brainstorming and discussion on interdisciplinary knowledge and collaboration
- Reflecting on examples from cities, sustainable infrastructure and sustainable technologies as they demonstrate interdisciplinary knowledge and collaboration

By the end of the workshop, participants will have constructed a LEGO model that represents interdisciplinary interactions. Reflecting on the building process and reflecting on the experience will give participants ideas for what collaboration looks like when working together in interdisciplinary thinking as we challenge city building practices and reimagine future cities, and identify opportunities where we can move beyond individual disciplines.

Reference: Nissani, M. 1994. “Fruits, Salads, and Smoothies: A Working Definition of Interdisciplinarity.” Journal of Educational Thought/Revue de La Pensee Educative. http://www.is.wayne.edu/MNISSANI/PAGEPUB/SMOOTHIE.htm