Dr. Herlin Chien
Vice Dean of the International Affairs, NPUST
Email: hchien@mail.npust.edu.tw
Herlin Chien is a political scientist with an interest in socio-ecological system, citizen engagement and sustainability transition. She has 10 years of experience advocating and studying public private partnership and the benefits of community and citizen participation in governance and public policymaking. Recently, she focuses on analyzing the coupled infrastructure system of urban river restoration projects and how different aspects of infrastructure, both hard and soft, influence the provisioning of urban ecosystem services or disservices by urban aquatic habitats. Currently, she is Deputy-Dean for NPUST Sustainable Development Office, Vice-Dean for Office of International Affairs and Associate Professor for Center of General Education promoting education for sustainable development (ESD). She can be reached at hchien@mail.npust.edu.tw
Course's Detail
In the study of democratization, democracy is divided into thin and thick governance. Since the installation of democratic institution for the past two hundred years, there are at least three waves of global democratization. Taiwan and other Asian countries are grouped as the late comers in the third wave. In order to consolidate democracy and avoid recession, countries around the world begin in the 21st century to push for deliberative democracy as one type of thick governance. Among the innovative mechanisms, to expand opportunities for citizen participation and to emphasize people entered practice in the sustainable city governance are pivotal.
This class, under the above mentioned academic and practical context, wishes to begin by introducing the theoretical concept of thick democracy. Then the SDG 11 Sustainable City proposed by the United Nations in 2015 and how local government and private sectors integrate citizen wisdom and participation to transform city from unsustainable governance, lifestyle or mode of production into sustainable path for enhancing adaptive capacity of human in fighting climate change are explored.