The problems that our contemporary societies are facing overwhelm the methods of the specialised scientific and professional disciplines. They demand –in order to harness our very existences– a decisive confrontation of the complexity in which our problems are rooted. The theory of systems offers a path for such confrontation whenever the crucial aspects of how complexity emerges, how it is structure, and how it evolves is properly addressed. Under this perspective the course aims at offering an introduction into the general foundations of systems with a view to the conceptualizing of energy and information, insofar as such conceptualizing can constitute a keystone for the effective articulation of scientific and practical disciplines. Such articulation is indeed the main goal of the European initiative PRIMER (PRomotion of Interdisciplinary Methodologies in Education and Research, http://primer.unileon.es) under which this event is convened, complementing other courses held during the past years.

The city constitutes a complex system example of particular interest in which almost all scientific and practical disciplines can be convened in order to exhaustively dealing with the dynamics of its complexity. Hence, the city will serve as paradigmatic case for the study of the emergence and dynamics of complex systems, addressing at the same time the relevant relation between design and ethics, which in urban planning is particularly clear.