News
4th November 2024

Design Your Future City with TCD Climate Action Week

We were excited to deliver this programme as part of Trinity College Dublin's Climate Action and Biodiversity week!

20 students from joined us for a deep-dive into all things STEM, urban design, and climate innovation, investigating how technology can support us to create a sustainable Dublin.

During the week, students gained real-world experience of climate challenges facing Dublin and were equipped with the knowledge and practical tools needed to understand and address them.


The week kicked off with an introduction into Active Travel. With the expert help of the Smart Dublin Team and Active Travel Unit, students learned about the development of the Dublin Active Travel Network and how sensors are used to monitor transport around the city. Students mapped areas around Dublin and brainstormed the challenges young people face in moving autonomously around the city.

The TYs were visited by multiple guest speakers and tech demonstrations throughout the programme. With the help of Prof. Karen Wiltshire and Anne Kearns from the Co-Centre for Climate+Biodiversity+Water students participated in a collaborative workshop, "Rising Tides” to explore the impact of changing sea levels on our environment. Jane Hackett, TCD Sustainability Manager led students around campus to demonstrate biodiversity initiatives in action, including green walls, wildflower meadows, fungi and even the famous Trinity fox! We were also joined by Kate from Bold Donut, who spoke about her adventure co-founding a climate education games series. Artist Judith Desprets led an AI-focused workshop where students used clay to creatively explore the physical infrastructure that supports such technologies.

After learning about different ways climate change impacts the future of cities we held a youth parliament workshop to debate the ethical considerations around climate change, such as greenwashing, food waste, and the carbon cost of emerging technologies such as AI.

The Critical Change Lab project in TCD delivered a history based workshop exploring the change in Dublin over the last 150 years, from reclaiming lands around the Docklands to changing streetscapes as cars replaced horses and carts.


Bringing Ideas to Life

As one final task, students brought together all they have learned to create their own solution to a city challenge they feel passionate about. Students spent the morning prototyping their ideas, before pitching their smart city solutions to a diverse panel of judges, including DCC's Climate Action Coordinator Dr Sabrina Dekker, DCC Smart City Lead Jamie Cudden, and Prof Joseph Roche and Jane Hackett from Trinity College Dublin. Safe to say that the panel was absolutely blown away by the creativity of students’ ideas, which ranged from an initiative to map the food waste of cafes and restaurants in Dublin, water purifying systems and playful street lighting initiatives that would promote active travel!


What did TYs think?

After a week of exploring new ideas, we asked this year’s ‘Design Your Future City’ participants to tell us their experience of the programme with one student saying:

“The week really opened my eyes to the amount of things that need to be considered when trying to solve a problem. You have to think about the people it will affect, the environment, different ethical issues…Before this I thought of urban planning as more just deciding where to put houses and buildings, now see how much technology is involved in it.”

For other students, working together in teams to create innovative projects was a real highlight:

“I really loved the end of the week where we got to come up with our own ideas to solve a problem. It was really fun working with a team to develop our solution and present it. We got to incorporate everything we had learned during the week”

For other students, the week opened their eyes to careers in climate change:

“I learned so many invaluable things that I never would've learned in school. I'm now even considering a career in environmental science! A career I had never even heard of before this course.”

Throughout the programme, it was the 20 fantastic TYs who fostered a fun, supportive, and energetic learning environment and reminded us how important it is to amplify young people’s voices when designing our future cities. We’re excited to see how students develop their ideas further in May 2025!