Main Page
TELOS stands for: Towards a European Landscape Economy for a Sustainable Urban Development
Project duration: November 2021 - November 2024
Why TELOS?
Our project brings five European metropolitan areas together to address this spatial and educational challenge in a new way: we link Rome, Stuttgart, Brussels, Gdansk and Antalya.
TELOS contributes to a large-scale transnational educational transformation and empowers a new generation of visionary professionals, decision-makers and urbanites, to address sustainability challenges through problem-solving approaches that integrate systems thinking, anticipatory strategic competences, real life scenarios and insights, and interpersonal skills.
TELOS aims to build ‘knowledge and action bridges’ between the seemingly competing systems of ecology and economy, as they appear in our everyday urban environment. The target groups of the TELOS project are primarily university staff and students from the following subject domains: urban planning, landscape planning, architecture and landscape architecture, agriculture, regional development, economics, business administration and real estate.
Related stakeholder groups are equitable finance players, real estate developers and related industries, NGOs, municipalities, and the wider public, aiming to break down barriers and foster collaboration while encouraging knowledge exchange at all levels.
TELOS Project Objectives
- To develop the first Landscape Economy curriculum by which learners can deeply immerse in the theories, dialectics and methodologies associated with these emerging concepts
- To build capacity among university teachers, enabling them to successfully implement interdisciplinary and transformative learning settings
- To build up key competences for sustainable urban development
- To create and share knowledge, by documenting TELOS methodology as an open educational resource
- To disseminate the TELOS curriculum and methodology as widely as possible.
Activities
Our project includes the following main activities:
- Development of the TELOS curriculum (design, testing, evaluation,exploitation and dissemination)
- Conceptualisation and implementation of two TELOS staff training events.
- Piloting the TELOS curriculum by means of two blended learning events.
Our blended learning events have already been implemented:
- TELOS Online Course October 2022 - January 2023
- TELOS Online Course October 2023 - January 2024
- TELOS Intensive Study Programme June 2023
- TELOS Intensive Study Programme February 2024
We further implement two Multiplier Events during which we involve a wider stakeholder network and diversified audiences into the development and dissemination of the TELOS intellectual outputs. One Multiplier Event was held in June 2023 during the Landscape Forum in Nürtingen. The second one will be in September 2024 during the ECLAS Conference in Brussels. Find out more.
Expected Project Results
Output 1: TELOS Landscape Economy curriculum
This includes all open educational resources, such as lecture recordings, a glossary of core terminology, presentations and learning materials.
Output 2: TELOS Landscape Economy teaching/learning toolbox
This output is targeted to educators in the sense of a facilitation handbook. It will include the theoretical background of landscape economy, the learning goals and competence framework of the TELOS curriculum, methodical guidance for interdisciplinary learning settings, workshop facilitations guidance, assessment criteria and evaluation methods, assignment descriptions, and full evidence of the TELOS experience.
>>> explore more about TELOS Outputs
Qualitative Outcomes
- Substantial capacity and skills development among the core target groups of the TELOS project, which will be transferable to other European audiences and up-scaled in other European locations. Our methodical framework embraces a pedagogical action research cycle, which will allow for a rapid prototyping on the TELOS curriculum, early testing and continuous adaptation and improvement based on the feedback of the actual end users.
Expected Impact
TELOS is expected to have its main impact in the following two dimensions:
Short term impact on Higher Education: more effective education for sustainable development through staff capacity building and curriculum innovation. The following main competence fields will be addressed: (1) systems thinking, (2) anticipatory competence, (3) normative competence, (4) strategic competence, and (5) interpersonal competence.
Long term impact on the local communities and their territorial contexts: mainstreaming TELOS competences will transform planning and development practices. This will lead to better spatial design and planning solutions characterised by sustainable economic models that support social and environmental goals. Keywords of this landscape-based approach are: circular economy, ecosystem services, green infrastructure, sustainable housing, digitalisation and smart city and community applications, all combined with democratic leadership skills, creative financing models, and innovative governance.
TELOS Partnership
Dissemination Partner IFLA EUROPE
