Working conference UNIC 2024: What do we retain from our visit to Oulu?
From September 24 to 26, Prof. Nathalie Crutzen - Academic Director and Founder of the Smart City Institute - and Audrey Lebas, Researcher and Coordinator of International Partnerships at the Institute, were part of the ULiège delegation present in Oulu, Finland, for the 2024 edition of the UNIC working conference. Held at the University of Oulu, the main theme was "Crossing borders and engaging with cities". After 2 days of plenary and working sessions, what to retain from the conference?
About the UNIC project
UNIC is an alliance of ten European universities, anchored in ten specific post-industrial urban ecosystems, dedicated to developing new European learning, working and research models that will shape the university of the future. The UNIC alliance offers a privileged framework for the exchange of best practices and the sharing of expertise in the fields of teaching, research and administration, on 7 transversal thematic lines: Superdiversity, Sustainability and Green Cities, Urban Resilience and Smart Cities, Justice, Security and Institutions, Entrepreneurship for Innovation, Health and Wellbeing, Arts, Culture and Creativity.
Realities underlying the city-university link
The theme of this year's annual conference, focusing on cities, is not trivial given that they are privileged partners of the European alliance. Indeed, one of UNIC's pillars lies in its close collaboration with the territories in which its 10 universities are located.
Numerous sessions gave pride of place to feedback from partner cities on ways of stimulating research. One of the most striking exchanges was the session entitled " How can we develop city-engaged projects? which highlighted the gap between the theoretical approach to university-city projects and the reality on the field.
While theoretical approaches recommend taking the time to really co-construct research projects, many of us highlighted the difficulty of reconciling the timeframes of European calls for projects and the respective agendas of everyone involved, especially city representatives, who rarely have the opportunity to free up time to invest strategically.
These exchanges, made possible by UNIC over these 2 days, are therefore not only a unique opportunity to compare the realities of the 10 territories involved, which have their own specificities and challenges, but also to better understand why certain problems may arise in terms of collaboration.
Discussions on our Smart Project Management Model
On the second day of the conference, we had the opportunity to organize a session as part of our "resilient and smart cities" theme line. After an introduction to our service by prof. Nathalie Crutzen, Audrey Lebas had the opportunity to present our Smart Project Management Model, a management model based on our practical guides, designed to help municipalities and cities structure and implement their transition processes. During this session, we particularly emphasized the methodological aspect and the way it is used by Walloon municipalities.
This was followed by a brief exchange with participants, including representatives from the cities of Oulu, Rotterdam and Istanbul. They pointed out that this model was an intuitive framework, particularly interesting for smaller territories which, unlike the cities present, do not always have in-house project management capabilities.
This UNIC experience has enabled us not only to showcase our expertise, but also - and this is particularly enriching - to challenge and discuss our practical tools with territorial players active on scales other than Wallonia.
In short, this new mission abroad represents a fantastic opportunity for our institute not only to promote its academic expertise, but also to take the Walloon Smart Cities/Smart Region dynamic beyond our borders.
