The city club has identified a number (193) of concrete challenges, see details here. What demands could these challenges generate regarding education and training? Is there a need to include training and education as part of the solutions and to facilitate implementation? Being fast identifying needs based on the challenges may become an important part of the solution and implementation.
There is also a need to match Master School and Doctoral Training Network courses academy activities.
State your view regarding the questions and statements above. Is this a significant need that requires our attention? How important is education and training for effective and efficient implementation? Why is this not met today?
We should here focus on trying to understand the nature of the need, so please try to avoid to discuss concrete solutions, even if it is difficult. Potential solutions will be discussed in the next step of the process.
EIT Urban Mobility Academy Calls 
A step back should be done in understanting what GAPs are there in the existing education sysrtem that make these challenges exist. Are those challenges there because existing education programmes(e.g. secondary education, university, etc.) are not able to provide suitable competences to solve the challenges or because City awareness GAP on exitsing solution is there? Only after having answered this question it would be possible to define a suitable plan to fix the above GAPs.
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Looking at these topics (below), education within these areas is needed because of a lack of knowledge that may hinder cities to embrace progress and adapt to new realities (policy, regulation etc.):
– Few people understand innovation and technologies (MaaS, connectivity, blockchain, AI, electrification, batteries, new sources of energies etc.)
– New stakeholders, new governance models and new ecosystems must be understood and mastered by cities
– Continuous awareness raising is needed
1. Shift to active modes of transport (walking & cycling)
2. Avoid negative health, safety and environment impacts of urban mobility
3. Improve urban logistics with a focus on last mile distribution
4. Improve public transport service provision
5. Improve the quality of public space
6. Improve traffic flow management (incl. ITS)
7. Avoid transition barriers
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City Challenges demands from education and training a complete integration between both dimensions. In this regard, City Challenges should be considered in pedagogical activities not as complementary or tangential events but as main drivers of learning. If this is taken as a guiding principle, the different activities involved in the Master and even in Doctoral training courses should be formulated on a challenge-based and collaborative basis. The idea is not to come up with immediate solutions, but to encourage students to research, get deeply involved with certain market problematics, and, above all, visualize potential problems of the industry and the city.
Besides adopting a challenge-based learning approach, there is an urgent need to integrate training within city challenges. Here, I provide some quick reasons:
1. It facilitates learning by creating challenge sensibilization among young people
2. Young people are carriers of views and needs which will determine the future
3. Students’ internships can dynamize the market
4. Mobility in education provides students with a wider and critical vision about the challenges in Europe
5. Students have fewer negative presumptions and prejudices about what solutions can work or not
6. Students can help transfer academy methodologies to the industry
7. Students allow to develop a working frame in which risky necessities can be explored without fear to fail
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The best skills trainer is practice! Why not connect the higher education ambitions closer to real-life urban mobility challenges. For instance, low emission last-mile deliveries. Student programmes like the Solar World Challenge or the European Solar Challenge are already out there. Why not create another format, the Solar Urban Mobility/Logistics Challenge, in which student teams from all over Europe compete to build a solar powered prototype which has to complete logistics services under living lab conditions. Any industry sponsors in the Partnership?
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Is the call the right place to bring up new topics or do we need another way to do this. If using the call, then there is a “time to market” of about 2 years. We should of course use existing challenges on ongoing education, such as Master School courses and the Summer School, but how to go fast from identified market need to offering training. Here the Competence Hub work with a funnel approach, constantly probing new topic which could turn into courses within months. This may be enough to handle this. So rather a constant analysis of needs, and fast filtering out and probing offers and topics on the market. Here a close cooperation between the Academy and the Cities and the City Club is essential. But not anything to include in the main call.
The concept regarding Challenge Competitions would be interesting to test, moving beyond hackathons and develop concrete solutions as part of a training. Something to test within the Master School?
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