Trans-sectoral Collaborative Governance in Urban Settings

Trans-sectoral Collaborative Governance in Urban Settings is an elective course carrying 5 ECTS credits and is taught in person during the summer semester. Recognition of the course depends on the student’s home faculty.

The course was developed through cooperation between teachers from the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Architecture. It connects legal, administrative, spatial, and urban perspectives in order to examine how public governance works when different sectors are expected to cooperate in shaping the future of cities.

The course addresses a topic that is becoming increasingly important in contemporary public governance and urban studies. As cities grow and urban problems become more complex, no single institution or profession can solve them alone. Questions of public space, brownfields, sustainable development, strategic planning, participation, and urban regeneration require cooperation between public authorities, civil society, the private sector, academia, and citizens.

Students will explore how this cooperation is organised in practice, how different actors are included in collective decision-making, and why participation has become a core principle of contemporary urban governance. Rather than treating cities only as physical spaces or administrative units, the course approaches them as shared environments shaped by institutions, policies, people, interests, conflicts, and possibilities for collaboration.

Through lectures, discussions, seminar work, and fieldwork, students will become familiar with the theoretical foundations, principles, and challenges of sustainable public governance in urban development. The interdisciplinary approach supports the acquisition of both conceptual knowledge and practical skills related to institutional arrangements, collaborative decision-making, stakeholder involvement, and the application of participatory methods in the preparation and implementation of urban public policies.

WHY THIS COURSE?

The course is designed for students who want to understand how cities are governed beyond formal institutions and standard planning procedures. It offers an opportunity to work with real urban issues, analyse the roles of different stakeholders, and develop strategies that connect governance, planning, sustainability, and participation.

For students interested in public administration, law, architecture, urban planning, political science, sociology, geography, economics, or related fields, the course provides a space to connect disciplinary knowledge with concrete urban challenges. It is especially relevant for those who want to work in public institutions, local government, urban development, policy analysis, civil society, consultancy, research, or interdisciplinary project environments.

WHO CAN ENROL IN THE COURSE?

The course is open to students enrolled in master’s programmes and final years of integrated study programmes, regardless of their academic field.

It is especially relevant for students from public administration, economics, law, political science, sociology, architecture, urban planning, geography, and related fields. Its interdisciplinary structure allows students to connect institutional, legal, spatial, social, and policy perspectives on urban governance.

Up to seven students from study programmes offered by constituent units of the University of Zagreb may enrol in the course.

The course is taught in an international environment, together with students enrolled in the joint master’s programme Redesigning the Post-Industrial City (RePIC), Track 4: Governance of Post-Industrial Cities.

EXPECTED LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Understand basic and advanced concepts related to urban planning and the governance of urban space.
• Explain the principles of urban planning and urban governance in the context of sustainable development.
• Understand how collaborative governance reshapes the relationship between citizens and public administration.
• Identify and critically analyse mechanisms for the involvement and cooperation of different actors, including state and non-state actors, in urban planning and the governance of urban space.
• Select and apply appropriate models of collaboration in a local urban context.

COURSE STRUCTURE AND CONTENT

Collaborative Trans-sectoral Governance is organised around four thematic blocks that gradually lead students from the foundations of post-industrial urbanism to the practical formulation of collaborative strategies for addressing concrete urban challenges. The course combines lectures, discussions, student presentations, seminar work, and a study visit, with strong emphasis on active participation and the application of concepts to selected spatial issues.

1. Foundations of post-industrial urbanism
   The course begins with an introduction to the post-industrial city and the key concepts needed to understand contemporary urban governance. Students are introduced to public interest, public space, brownfields, governance, public policies, sustainable development, integrative planning, coordination, participation, and interdisciplinarity. These concepts are discussed through the case of the City of Zagreb and connected to the students’ first seminar task, in which they analyse the context of a selected city and identify relevant spatial issues.
2. Policy, governance, and sustainability
   The second thematic block focuses on public policies, strategic governance, and sustainable development in urban settings. Students examine theoretical and practical perspectives on how public policies are developed and implemented, with attention to the changing role of public authorities and the importance of governance structures in complex urban environments. Sustainable development is addressed through urban governance challenges and practical case studies, including the Adriatic island context.
3. Strategic and integrative planning
   The third block introduces strategic and integrative planning as tools for addressing urban challenges. Students work with planning interpretation techniques, the preparation of strategy documents, SWOT analysis, and the Quadruple Helix model, which connects academia, public authorities, the private sector, and citizens as key actors in collaborative urban governance.
4. Participatory governance methods
   The final thematic block focuses on participation, coordination, and the policy cycle, with particular attention to collaborative methods for solving urban problems. Students explore advanced techniques in participatory urban governance through case studies, practical applications, and a city lab with students from Erasmus University Rotterdam.
5. Study visit and final seminar work
   The course includes a study visit to brownfield locations in the City of Zagreb, where students observe and analyse urban challenges and possible governance responses in situ. The field component allows students to connect course concepts with real urban processes, spatial transformations, institutional actors, and decision-making challenges. The seminar presentations developed throughout the semester are combined and refined into a final presentation, which then serves as the basis for the final seminar paper.

STUDENT OBLIGATIONS

Class attendance is mandatory and necessary for completing the course.

Students are expected to participate actively in lectures and discussions. Between lectures, they work on a seminar assignment and are encouraged to research the selected seminar topic independently.

During the semester, students present their seminar assignments in class, followed by discussion. At the end of the semester, students prepare and deliver a final seminar presentation.

The separate seminar presentations prepared during the course should be combined, revised, and polished into the final presentation. Based on this final presentation material, students are required to submit a seminar paper in order to complete the course. The seminar paper should be between 30,000 and 50,000 characters long, including references, tables, graphs, and other visual material.

COURSE LECTURERS

• Assoc. prof. Kristina Careva, PhD MArch, Department of Architectural Design, Faculty of Architecture of the University of Zagreb, kcareva@arhitekt.hr
• Assoc. prof. Teo Giljević, Department of Administrative Science of the Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb, tgiljevi@pravo.hr
• Professor Goranka Lalić Novak, Department of Administrative Science of the Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb, glalic@pravo.hr
• Assoc. prof. Rene Lisac, PhD MArch, Department of Architectural Design, Faculty of Architecture of the University of Zagreb, rlisac@arhitekt.hr
• Assoc. prof. Tijana Vukojičić Tomić, Department of Administrative Science of the Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb, tvukojic@pravo.hr