How can post-industrial cities adapt to climate pressures, demographic change and the digital transition? In the summer of 2025, EUR students and staff took part in the UNIC Summer Course "Resilience and Sustainability", a blended programme with online sessions and a final week at Ruhr University Bochum. Participants explored these real urban challenges, working in mixed teams on real-life urban issues.
A European classroom tackling real issues
UNIC (the European University of Cities in Post-Industrial Transition) is an alliance of ten universities across Europe and facilitates education and research through Thematic Lines (TLs)—alliance-wide focus areas that connect partners and cities. TL3 focuses on Urban Resilience and Smart Cities. In this corresponding summer course, students learned a structured method to translate knowledge into practice and addressed the same problem of sustainability and resilience from different regional and national perspectives. At the end, they presented their solutions to a jury in Bochum.
Alliance embodies Strategy 2030
For the EUR 2030 Strategy, UNIC is a strategic vehicle for Europe: the alliance builds European education and research with partners while staying locally embedded and engaged. Activities like this summer course make that strategy tangible; bringing EUR students and staff together with UNIC partners to co-create, share expertise on real urban challenges and translate knowledge into practice across regions. EUR students and staff participated successfully in the course, including Professor Martin de Jong.
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