<< Background >>The project addresses a common educational need by means of establishing and developing a cooperation partnership between experts on urban and suburban culture from four research universities from the EU and the US. These partner universities include Palacký University (Czech Republic), University Duisburg-Essen (Germany), University Clermont-Auvergne (France), and San Diego State University (United States). The project reflects the massive development of urban and suburban culture in the EU and the United States as well as the growing diversification of the issues in the area of mobility, growing class and ethnic diversity of urban and suburban communities, inclusion and exclusion issues, commuting challenges, construction of urban and suburban identities in the domestic and public space, and sociocultural challenges of back migration from suburbs to cities in the EU countries and the US. The current state of research and education about the urban and suburban culture suffers from lack of multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspective that would link research findings of individual disciplines of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences and transfer them into digital education processes. The project surveys the existing research and subsequently provides transdisciplinary synergy of the knowledge about the state of urban and suburban culture in EU countries (the Czech Republic, Germany, France) in comparison to the situation in the United States. Experts from the four partner institutions will share ideas and provide transdisciplinary solutions to the education and communication of the current and future challenges of European and American urban and suburban culture. Team members will draw on their expertise in the fields of history, literary and cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, urbanism, ecological sustainability, architecture, art history, social and cultural geography and digital geoinformatics. The challenges and issues of urban and suburban culture in contemporary EU countries and the US have been the focus of much research, yet researchers so far have worked in isolation, within their individual fields. The project will thus promote knowledge sharing and synergic treatment of the subject of urban and suburban culture in the EU and the US in the courses taught at the partner institutions. The project outputs will thus be transdisciplinary and will provide new knowledge which will be disseminated to the project target university audience and the general public at the four partner universities and beyond. The project outputs will be shared on the transnational level as well (including the international conference and project workshops/webinars which will be open to an international audience via online videconferencing platforms). The intellectual outputs of the project will include articles, lectures, workshops, interviews, interactive maps, a collective monograph, digital interactive teaching materials, an exhibition of the project outcomes that will be in physical and digital format, and a transdisciplinary international conference. The project outputs will be used in teaching, blended mobility, research, and public debate on the subject of sub/urban culture in the selected EU countries as compared to the sub/urban culture in the US. The project outputs will make a significant contribution to the ongoing debate about the challenges of urban and suburban growth in the EU and the US. The outputs will be synergic, re-usable and transferable to a wide range of fields within future education, research, urban planning, and urban policy. The project will improve the diversity of education provided by the partner universities, and will include students and staff with special needs who are part of the project target audience. The project results will be shared at the local, regional, national, and transnational levels.<< Objectives >>The project teams intends to contribute towards innovative teaching and learning at tertiary level institutions while maximizing the use of digital tools and platforms. In addition, on the topic of the sub/urban studies the project will show that transdisciplinarity and synergy between social sciencies and humanities on the one hand, and natural sciences, on the other hand, is possible. The project with the discussion and analysis of sub/urban issues aims at deepening the knowledge of European citizenship as the decision where to live in EU is closely related to national and European citizenship. As the socioeconomic and ethnic aspects of sub/urban context will be discussed, the topic of inclusion will be foregrounded. Furthermore, the project counts with the inclusion of target group members with special needs that will constitute an integral part of the project activities such as blended mobility, teaching and learning activities and multiplier events. Based on the results, the project will foster public discussion with the local, national and potentially European stakeholders about sub/urban challenges and future developments which necessarily include elements of sustainability. The project team intends to draw participants from various groups, such as university students, university staff, general and scholarly public at the multiplier events in order to maximize the participation in the project activities. Last but not least, by posting the results in open access platforms free of charge, the results will be available to other research and teaching or public teams that can build on the activities and results of the current project team.<< Implementation >>The project team will be conducting research and teaching and learning acitivities and multiplier events to disseminate the project results. The aim of the research part is to find out the most current development of sub/urban studies and immediately to use the findings in teaching and learning activities at the partner institutions. Research does not start from the scratch, it will be building on the long-standing expertise and experience of teams members that are recruited from various fields and disciplines and therefore the target groups will profit from a transdisciplinary approach. The teachning and learning activities will focus on the four priorities of the Erasmus programme and the EU, ie. inclusion, diversity, digitalization,sustainability, and participation. The project will for example utilize the green travel option whenever possible, it includes people with special needs, it will share not only among the target groups but also with the general and scholarly public the results at the multiplier events, the partner institutions will exchange examples of good practice. As the subject of sub/urban studies is very topical and related to all citizens of EU, through the discussion of the specificities of sub/urbanism the project team hopes to activate public awareness of national and European citizenship and sharing of European values and identities. An added value would be the comparision with American context-- the aim of this dimension is the highlight similarities and differences between European and non-EU conditions in contemporary sub/urban studies and development. Teaching and learning activities will bring together staff and students from all four partner universities to work on shared projects that will utilize the digitial methods of instruction and learning. Part of these activities would be utilizing the possiblities of digital strategies in education and research in accordance with the national and EU strategies concerning digital literacy and priorities. Multiplier events that will have the form of small conferences, one big transdisciplinary international conference, exhibition, workshops opened to the audience outside the university target group will foster public discussion and will draw the attention of the political stakeholders to the project.<< Results >>The results of the project include improved skills of the target groups (university students and staff) regarding the use of digital technologies in education (ie. both in the learning processes and during instruction). Further, due to the detailed discussion of the sub/urban topic which closely relates to societal challeges of modern EU and non-EU countries, the members of the target group will have acquired a better understanding on national and European values and citizenship. In addition, the development of sub/urbia includes challenges connected with inclusion elements as, for example, some social or ethnic groups might feel underpriviledged in being able to afford to live in modern satellite suburbs. There are members of the team who are experienced researchers in the field of sustainable development in sub/urban areas and therefore, this aspect will be treated as well and it will projected into the intellectual outputs of the project. The tangible outcomes of the project are book chapters for a subsequent collective transdisciplinary monograph that will be produced as an scholarly e-book, scholarly articles on sub/urban theme with transdisciplinary perpective, lectures at conferences and at universities and at the multiplier events on the project topic, innovative teaching materials in digital form shared not only by the project partners but available to all via the platforms named below, a physical as well as digital interactive exhibition on sub/urban distinguished projects in partner countries, digital interactive maps using data acquired by geographers and geoinformatics experts and used by the students for their tasks to be completed during blended mobility, interviews with scholars, local stake holders and sub/urbanites, and last but not least workshops with scholars, experts and local, national and EU stakeholders who influence the policy of sub/urban development. Due to the planned multiplier events, especially the transdisciplinary conference towards the project duration, the team hopes to introduce the outcomes of the shared research and teaching/learning activities to audiences beyond the university students and staff, for example, students and professors from secondary schools, local politicians, national politicians, experts will be invited to provide and share insights into the topic of suburbia. The conference will provide a platform not only for lectures but more importantly for panel discussions.