UNIC CityLabs Trivia Quiz

CityLabs has been recognised as a key strength of our UNIC Alliance. In a video address to the UNIC Strategic Conference in Rotterdam earlier this year, Sophia Eriksson, Director for Youth, Education, and Erasmus+ at the European Commission, said UNIC is “leading the way to the universities of the future,” in particular singling out praise for our CityLabs, which bring together students, professors, citizens, and city partners to jointly work on urban challenges.

Since UNIC began in 2020, city and community stakeholders, students and academics have connected through CItyLabs to work on over 120 challenges across our alliance. Through CityLabs we have tested, piloted and developed modalities for integrating co-creation within our cities and universities - connecting with curriculum, research and innovation in our Universities. With over 200 cases produced to date, naturally, today is only a small glimpse at some of what has been happening.

Now that we have had a recap on UNIC CityLabs, let's focus on the topics or challenges we have been exploring through ourCityLabs activities. To begin, each UNIC University took guidance from its municipality and other societal stakeholders to inform the development of some common high-level challenge themes faced by our cities.

The UNIC CityLabs coordination could thus identify 6 main thematic areas with which to start working on local challenges. ​ Diversity and inclusion; Well-being and Ageing Well; Green cities and sustainability; Arts, Culture and creativity; Urban resilience and transformation; and Digital transition.

These themes have been refined as UNIC has developed over the years, with CityLabs working closely with the UNIC for Engaged Research initiative and their engagement with the Cities. The themes have now been agreed upon, form part of our Cities’ Engaged Research Roadmaps and are aligned with the EU Urban Agenda.

We’ve used some of our CityLabs cases as inspiration for our quiz!