Knowledge: You will acquire knowledge in the domains described in the course topics section. Specific attention will be dedicated to develop a multidisciplinary, although introductory, knowledge to face investments under the sustainability umbrella and at multiscale levels of analysis. It will be promoted a type of deep understanding and replicability of concepts rather than a mnemonic learning. Autonomy in learning will also be emphasised, to provide self-directed learners, independent and confident, with a questioning spirit. The course will be conducted in a way to offer learning outcomes enabling professional applications as well as academic-research oriented knowledge. I use a “Systematic approach” which emphasises the outcomes to be achieved rather than the content to be imparted: a learner-centred approach rather than teacher knowledge-based. It was Herbert George Wells who said: “You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.” This losing feeling, confusion, is what some students could feel when reaching the right dimension of something new just happened to their vision and learning experience. A “confusion” feeling might happen because the underlying schemata are changing: learning of a higher order. This course will follow the constructivism approach according to which learning is not just adding, but changing information, a continuous amending of previous mental structures, an individual transformation. A main learning goal of this course teaching method is also to help students reaching what Bigg (1999), in his cognitive learning domain list, calls “extended abstract”, the highest and most wanted learning goal happening when a coherent whole is conceptualised at a high level of abstraction and applied to new or wider contexts. When this happens, a breakthrough has been made and your way to think about the issue changes. Abilities: - to multidisciplinary link knowledge from different disciplines about evaluations; - to assess the viability-sustainability of urban projects from a long-term and holistic perspective; - to conduct/understand critical updated academic state-of-the-art; - to merge academic knowledge with applications; - to search, understand and create knowledge

The course does not consider any prerequisites.

The program of the course is articulated according to the following macro-themes: - Investments & sustainable investments - Landscape finance - Sustainable land use investments - Integrated landscape investments - Investments return in the long-run - Complexity - Decision-making - Multi-criteria analysis - Valuations & evaluations - Theories of values - Evaluation methods & applications - Monetary/non-monetary based techniques - Economics/Psychosocial/Environmental evaluations of investments - Case studies: international new urban developments’ evaluation

A number of workshops, individual/group presentations and exercises will regularly occur and be evaluated, together with a final assignment, for the final exam mark. The course will alternate theoretical lectures from the teacher and interactive discussions with students as well as student’s presentations of subjects voluntarily chosen or, if necessary, given. I provide a succession of step by step notions but with a constant big picture view, often with analogies not that obvious or linear, with the ambition to stimulating students’ minds and a creative reasoning. This course-teaching structure would try to accommodate a variety of student typologies that a usual classroom might have: activists (liking challenges, new experiences, excitement, freedom), reflectors (they need time, prefer structure and details), theorists (they like to stretch their intellects), pragmatists (practically based, immediately relevant learning activities). It would stimulate a deep approach (understand and seek meanings, relate knowledge with experience, critically evaluating, full engagements with dominant themes and understanding of the contributing arguments) rather than superficial (parrot memorisation, fail to identify the dominant themes and underling arguments because of only aiming to remember the flat landscape of information and pass the exam). Lectures are designed in a way to privilege to think, act, innovate, create. How to structure (recall, combine, synthesizes, extrapolate) info and use it (apply this info in an innovative and creative way). It will use a variation of teaching methods to involve various student attitudes and personalities, possibly stimulating interest, attention, participation and motivations, and it will have fair assessments accurately valuated.

Glen Arnold, Deborah Lewis (2019). Corporate Financial Management. Pearson Education George G. Szpiro (2020). Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty. Three Centuries of Economic Decision-Making. Columbia University Press. Ben Paton (2012). Valuing the Future a Conversation about Investment. Sociable Publishing. Layard R., Glaister S. (1999). Cost-Benefit Analysis. Cambridge University Press. Levin H.M., McEwan P.J. (2001). Cost-Effectiveness Analysis. Sage. Archer W., Ling D.C. (2012). Real Estate Principles: A Value Approach. McGraw-Hill. Landscape finance: investing in innovation for sustainable landscape. Wageningen University (edX 2021). Securing investiment returns in the long-run. University of Geneve (coursera). Decision-making-scenarios. University of Pennsylvania (coursera). Additional bibliography, papers, slides and notes will be shared in the portale della didattica and their relevant parts discussed in class.

Exam: Individual essay; Group essay;

Exam: individual essay (50%) + exercises delivery (50%) The individual essay is a 500 (minimum) - 600 (maximum) words paper that you will write (open book exam and unlimited time) on a chosen or given topic among the ones discussed in the lectures. It will test the capacity of your own in depth study and in depth understanding of concepts and research outputs (especially the methodologies, the results and their real-word implications) visible in the way how you will describe the state-of-the-art. It will also test your critical-creative analysis and evaluation of the academic articles (from indexed journals only, between 5 and 15, within which and at least 5 from the last 10 years) to be comparatively discussed. The exercises will occur partially in class partially at home within the teaching duration and will test your capacity to apply the concepts and methods learnt during the lectures and via the related material indicated. More information will be timely shared via the "avvisi" on the portale della didattica.

In addition to the message sent by the online system, students with disabilities or Specific Learning Disorders (SLD) are invited to directly inform the professor in charge of the course about the special arrangements for the exam that have been agreed with the Special Needs Unit. The professor has to be informed at least one week before the beginning of the examination session in order to provide students with the most suitable arrangements for each specific type of exam.