International groups of students work on ISCN challenge

digital urban planning proximity to the public

A group of students from Erasmus University Rotterdam that participated in the ISCN Smart City University Challenge — Erasmus University Rotterdam

The development of common good-oriented smart cities is truly a group effort. It will only succeed if we source perspectives, ideas and skills from the full width of our societies.

One of the “smartest” places in many cities and communities — in a very literal sense — is the many schools and universities where young bright minds come together. Yet often youth is still not sufficiently involved in thinking about the data-driven futures of their municipalities.

The ISCN Smart City University Challenge aspires to change that. Having gathered many impressions and questions from smart cities in its ecosystem, the ISCN has formulated practically oriented problem-settings for students to work on. Typically, at the start of a day a metaphorical "envelope" is opened, where students learn about the challenge at hand and throw themselves right at it.

Group of students at Toronto Metropolitan University participating in the ISCN Smart City University Challenge 2024 — Toronto Metropolitan University

In the most recent edition, students ideated on how to better understand “known unknowns” of urban phenomena through the innovative employment of data sets.

There is many phenomena in cities and communities that we do observe but don’t quite understand what makes them and how they work. For aspiring smart cities, one way to address this, of course, is through decidedly data-driven approaches. Students were thus asked to formulate and define known unknowns that they observe in urban environments, and subsequently think about datasets that could enhance understanding on those known unknowns, and best-case render them “known knowns”.
Datasets may come through data-sharing, as data generally is still often siloed or held by one specific actor not yet willing to share them with an interested party; or through completely new creation of it.

Group picture of the students from Ostfalia university participating in the challenge — Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences

Eager participants from courses relating to smart city development at Toronto Metropolitan University (Canada), Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands) and Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences (Germany), came up with a wonderful batch of ideas, often already succinctly and impressively conceptualized, especially given the short timeframe available. The great professors and lecturers with whom the ISCN coordinated the challenge, reported buzzing and focused atmospheres, big learnings, and rich engagement with the inputs from fellow students and their diverse backgrounds.

Map of participating universities in ISCN Smart City University Challenge 2024 — GIZ

Suggestions at the end ranged from better registers of building materials in informal settlements; streamlined datasets for accessibility of housing units; approximations of the vitality and livability of urban plazas; indicators on the nexus of social and transport mobility; and many more. As a second layer of variety, the groups had contextualized their ideations in different regions of the world.

Coming together to compare the approaches

In February 2025, all groups came together for an online meeting to get to know each other and compare their approaches. Students had the rare opportunity to receive direct feedback on their results from policy officers of the German Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building, and from other university professors. All participants also discussed, how such results from students could be further situated in established processes of public governance. Four ideas and potentials were sketched:

Proposals for embedding students' ideas and skills in public governance processes of smart cities:

Running more extended "client-based studios", like Toronto Metropolitan University is doing, where several public stakeholders have concrete tasks and approach students in the role of a client over an extended period of time.
Some programmes of the Erasmus University Rotterdam are running "Urban Governance Labs", a similarly practically oriented format.
Smart Cities could provide small experimental funds, akin e.g. to the Wijkbudget (district budgets) in the Netherlands, so that initial sparks like those from the ISCN Smart City University Challenge could be formulated and developed more comprehensively, to prepare specific decisions or initiatives of the municipal council.
Project managers from Smart City projects can invite students, or the citizens more broadly, into co-creation workshops and processes to complement their own strategies and workstreams.
In the age of mounting fake news and disinformation, student sprints on data-related topics could be a building block for trusted "third-party" contextualization and correction, as a complementary to crowdsourced approaches like e.g. community notes.

A screenshot of the videocall with many participants of the meeting of international universities smiling into the camera — GIZ

While students thereby got a very tangible insight on how to apply learnt theory in a fast-paced and practical environment, policy officers from the Ministry got an impression into how young people would approach smart city challenges (e.g. sometimes thinking about entirely different data sources).
Renate Mitterhuber, head of the Division Smart Cities and Region from the Ministry summarized as follows:

What an exciting win-win situation where theory and practice came together: In the shortest of time, students came up with inspiring ideas for data-driven approaches in cities and communities. In exchange they received direct feedback from practitioners and experts. I think this inspires all of us for a collaborative future.

The ISCN looks forward to continuing linking some of the emerged ideas with its network and practitioners.

Are you a student, lecturer, or somebody keen to cooperate with universities on smart city topics? Or eager to join the next edition of the ISCN Smart City University Challenge? Reach out to us via iscn@giz.de!