The University-City Action Lab (UCITYLAB) project aims to strengthen the links between HEIs and the city stakeholders by having students solve city issues through a series of challenge projects in Paris, Barcelona, Porto and Ljubljana. It will do so by facilitating knowledge exchange and flow of resources, enhancing societal relevance of HEI curriculum via civic engagement, helping develop relevant skills among students, empowering universities in increasing their knowledge and practice in establishing urban partnerships, and fostering adoption of city engagement models in European HEIs.
The project started in 2018 and runs until 2021. The end result will be a comprehensive understanding of how universities and governments collaborate, as well as the development of 8 Challenge projects at 4 different higher education institutions.
During its lifetime, the project will map the status-quo of university-city cooperation at the national and international level, launch UCITYLAB networks in the partner countries to start conversations with regional stakeholders for collaborative societal innovation, and prepare the UCITYLAB challenge course program and implement it in two phases of teaching and real-life projects, during which the students tackle challenges in their urban environment. While UCITYLAB targets the development of university-city cooperation in four major European cities – Porto, Paris, Ljubljana, and Barcelona – the project puts great emphasis on highlighting good practice initiatives from both within Europe and across the globe to facilitate knowledge exchange among the stakeholders.
Are you involved in a university-city initiative to tackle urban challenges via student projects, or research? Join our UCITYLAB Network through our LinkedIn page to share experiences, and contact us if you would like your initiative to be published in our project blog.
In this video, Rui Coutinho, Executive Director for Innovation, Development and Growth at Porto Business School, tells us his institution and students’ experience to problem-based solving and network creation in Porto.
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