Listening for Solutions

During the course of two transatlantic trips to India, and a semester of intercultural collaboration, University of Utah students discovered that before you can solve, you have to listen.

From December 2015 through June 2016, history professor Benjamin Cohen and Stephen Goldsmith, associate professor (lecturer) in the Department of City & Metropolitan Planning, built an interdisciplinary cohort of six University of Utah and nine Indian student researchers. Tasked by the United States Consulate General in Hyderabad to create ‘market-ready solutions for sustainable urbanization,’ the team chose to target water. Hyderabad, the capital of the Indian state Telangana, was once known as the city of lakes. Today, Hyderabad’s residents face water insecurity due, in part, to problematic urban development. Cohen and Goldsmith used the grant as a singular opportunity for U students to connect sustainability, culture and applied research toward addressing one of Hyderabad’s wicked problems.  Read the whole article.