UNIC
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RUB, Jasmin Hihat
Shaping Bochum together - the Centre for City Futures
The RUB Centre for City Futures (CCF) is your interface between urban society and science. As a platform, we bring together scientists, students, civil society actors, administration, business and culture.
Our goal: to jointly identify social challenges, develop innovative solutions and successfully put them into practice. In this way, we actively support Bochum on its way to becoming a city of the future - socially, ecologically and innovatively.
The Centre for City Futures is your point of contact if you:
- want to raise a social issue or challenge,
- Are looking for support from the scientific community,
- want to work together with students or researchers,
- want to get new impulses for your projects.
Securing skilled workers and integration into the labor market
in particular through improved arrival structures for national and international skilled workers
Sustainable urban development
with the active participation of citizens in planning and transformation processes
Promoting democracy
through educational projects for children, young people and adults
Early childhood education
to better accompany transitions from daycare to elementary school
Internationalization of urban society
with the involvement of business, science and civil society
Do you want to tackle current challenges or gain new impetus? The Centre for City Futures connects organizations, companies, associations, initiatives and administrations with academia:
- Scientific expertise for your work: Share your topics, questions or ideas and we will bring you together with suitable researchers and students at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and design individual cooperation formats.
- Become part of a strong network: Interested institutions can register with the Centre for City Futures to receive regular updates on project opportunities, events and cooperation possibilities.
- International impetus for local issues: The UNIC network gives local partners access to topics, expertise and cooperation opportunities in nine other European cities - from Bilbao to Rotterdam and Istanbul.
Would you like to address social issues in your teaching or research? The Centre for City Futures opens doors to the city:
- Topics from society for your work: We help you to identify current issues from Bochum and integrate them into courses, project formats or research projects.
- Access to practice partners: Whether administration, companies, municipal organizations or initiatives: We can put you in touch with suitable cooperation partners for research, teaching or transdisciplinary projects.
- Support for your teaching: Let us advise you and use our didactic concepts, materials and framework concepts for research-based and challenge-based learning in the context of urban challenges. These include the CityLab concept or the Re-Imaginatorium.
Do you want more than theory in your studies? The Centre for City Futures turns learning into shaping society - locally and internationally:
- Real challenges, real learning: work on real urban issues - interdisciplinary, solution-oriented and practical.
- Study internationally: Use the UNIC network for Europe-wide teaching formats, digital courses and exchange programs in cities such as Istanbul or Rotterdam.
- Final theses with social impact: Write your final thesis on a challenge that affects European cities. Work on practical and socially relevant issues.
- Internships in the Europe-wide network: Complete an internship in Bochum or at the UNIC partner universities and partner cities. Gain valuable experience in international projects and in solving social challenges.
The international UNIC network
The RUB Center for City Futures in Bochum is part of a Europe-wide real-world laboratory for urban transformation: the UNIC Centre for City Futures. Together with nine other universities and their home cities - from Bilbao to Oulu to Istanbul - we are shaping the city of the future: social, sustainable, resilient.
In all UNIC cities, there are comparable City Futures Centers that work closely together - in teaching, research and practice. This creates a unique network that connects cities and science across Europe.
What the centers make possible:
- Cross-border exchange of knowledge and experience, e.g. on the question of how cities deal with social inequality, climate change or digitalization.
- European collaborations in which students from different cities work together on social challenges.
- The development of joint research projects on topics such as superdiversity, sustainability or urban resilience.
- Joint work and support for cities in their future development
- Superdiversity - Researching and designing inclusive structures in superdiverse university and urban societies.
- Sustainability and Green Cities - Development of sustainable, environmentally friendly cities through close city-university cooperation.
- Urban Resilience and Smart Cities - Promoting resilient and smart cities through interdisciplinary collaboration.
- Justice, Security, and Institutions - Strengthening just, secure and efficient urban institutions.
- Entrepreneurial Learning for Innovation - Supporting entrepreneurial thinking to solve societal challenges.
- Health and Wellbeing - Developing interdisciplinary approaches to improve health and wellbeing in urban areas.
- Arts, Culture, and Creativity - Using cultural expression to promote participation and urban change
Contact and get involved
Would you like to find out more, have questions or want to start a project? We are here for you.
Write an e-mail to the head of the RUB CCF:
- Michael Weckop: CentreForCityFutures@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
Or visit him in the newly opened RUB CCF contact office in Bochum city center:
- Blue Square, Kortumstr. 90 (first floor), 44787 Bochum
Opening hours: Wednesdays 09:00-11:00 and Thursdays 13:00-15:00
Our cooperation database
Would you like to be informed about opportunities for cooperation - for example on teaching projects, events or calls for proposals or do you have a specific concern, a social challenge or an idea that you would like to work on together with researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum?
Then use our form to register in our cooperation database.
Please note that inclusion in the cooperation database is non-binding and does not constitute an automatic commitment to a specific cooperation. We will inform you about suitable offers and opportunities for participation - direct contact will be made when thematic points of contact arise.