What can you expect?
CIRCU-CITY trains and challenges you to co-develop innovative solutions for sustainable circular cities. By participating, you gain interdisciplinary skills and expand your knowledge beyond your expertise, empowering you to contribute to sustainable urban development.
The program focuses on renewable energy, urban planning, mobility, water management, food systems, and circularity assessment tools such as material flow analysis (MFA), and multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA).
Timing and practical organization
CIRCU-CITY follows a blended format, combining online and on-campus components. The online phase includes 10 hours of lectures, that will be recorded for those who cannot participate live; and up to 20 hours of online group work. Participants are required to actively contribute to the group work before the on-campus week. For flexibility, group work meetings can be scheduled at mutually agreed-upon times.
On campus participation is mandatory. A detailed schedule and accommodation options will be made available to the selected participants.
Training concept
The programme is composed of 3 inter-woven training lines:
• A series of online lectures and workshops will be conducted by experts. The topics covered include circular economy, assessment tools for circularity (MFA, MCDA), food systems, water management, energy, and urban planning. These sessions are designed to provide valuable insights and knowledge for all students participating in the program.
• During the online phase, alongside the lectures, you will be organized into teams consisting of approximately 5-6 members with similar academic background. These teams will engage in a collaborative research focused on a specific theme (water, food, energy, mobility), and will use tools such as MCDA and MFA to frame/analyze the current scenario of the city district. You must then propose ideas for future scenarios aligned with sustainability and circular principles. Throughout the process, each thematic team will receive guidance from a mentor who will support them in their work. As the initial milestone, the teams will deliver a micro-teaching presentation to their fellow students showcasing their discoveries.
• An immersive week with a multi-day tournament. Students will be reorganized into multidisciplinary groups consisting of 5-6 members. These groups will face the challenge of integrating their acquired thematic knowledge to reimagine and redesign the city district, considering all the themes (urban planning and mobility, water management, energy sustainability, and food). Each group will have to select innovative solutions and incorporate them into a comprehensive masterplan. To assess the outcomes, the groups will employ tools such as MCDA and MFA. At the end of the week, each group will present their final city district masterplan, which will be evaluated by the tournament board.
Previous CIRCU-CITY editions
The development of CIRCU-CITY in previous years was financially supported by EIT Raw Materials. Are you curious about what we have organized and achieved in previous editions? Take a look