With the advent of high-technology implementations in our global cities, along with campaigns to achieve sustainability, the concept of ‘smart cities’ has arisen with the goal of delivering human-centred services and improving the quality of living of its people. Cities around the world are transforming into smart cities and they strive to continuously develop. These global transformations are affecting millions of lives, especially now that the number of people living in cities is growing. One of the goals of the SMACCs programme is to develop smart city professionals that will address the challenges accompanying the smart transformations of our cities. I describe below some of the most striking opportunities that were offered to me as a SMACCs scholar.

Internationalisation opportunities:

With SMACCs, as part of the international Erasmus Mundus programme, I met and became friends with many talented young individuals coming from all over the world. The experience of working with several personalities, understanding a variety of cultures, studying in various environments, and learning from completely different perspectives, is I believe the most invaluable training I had from the programme. I believe this kind of international collaboration has given me a glimpse of what will be the norm in the future of working. The world continuously faces new challenges, and these get more complex every single time. If we are about to deal with challenges that are global, it just makes sense to solve them through partnerships that are global as well, just like what we do in SMACCs.

Technologies opportunities:

On the learning side of the programme, SMACCs taught us about the cutting-edge technologies that are being implemented in the cities of Europe in the sectors of energy, mobility, buildings, and urban planning. We applied these theories by doing challenging engineering projects such as the following:

1. Design of heating, ventilation, and cooling system with renewable energy and battery storage of residential structures with the use of TRNSYS software.
2. Reliability assessment of power generation units with renewable energy and load flow calculations of power distribution with microgrids.
3. Performance study of solar thermal implementation on domestic hot water use.
4. Preliminary design and performance verification of wind turbine technologies.

Our projects in SMACCs have given me insights into how technologies in our smart cities are continuously developing through innovations, research, and development. While the number of technologies being taught can be overwhelming, I feel that understanding them gave me the flexibility to develop technical solutions for any kind of problems in cities I would face in the near future. With my new knowledge, I can optimise solutions from various available technologies, either choosing or combining them, depending on the challenge needed to be addressed.

Urban and mobility problems in cities:

One of my favourite parts of the programme is the opportunity to work on real-life urban and mobility project, focusing on one of the most complex cities in Europe: the city of Brussels. Along with our skills acquired during our previous careers, we managed to develop solutions for the city, by applying our new knowledge learned in the SMACCs programme. This activity taught us how to become resourceful, and how to communicate with the right authorities to acquire the figures and data needed to develop solutions that can change the city positively. As I dig down to countless but interrelated problems occurring in Brussels, I had the opportunity to learn from urban planners of Europe the best practices for solving urban challenges. I came up with what I perceived as the optimal solution for the city, which is to implement multimodal transport hubs in its suburbs and outskirts. From this activity, I really developed an entirely different perspective on how cities should be and what they can be. But above all the concepts and theories we learned from the course, I believe the creativeness and critical thinking as a city planner are the most important skills we developed from the project. Because of this, I am more confident to deal with real-world projects and excited to face more challenges in our cities as they continue to become smarter and more sustainable.

Sustainability challenges:

Sustainability has lately attracted an enormous momentum within the industry and civil society, as the effects of climate change are becoming more and more tangible, especially in cities. As students starting the SMACCs programme, we thought that we already knew much about sustainability, but after SMACCs exposed us to several discussions and learning activities such as the preparation of a Climate Fresk, we did realize the size of the challenges we still have to address as future professionals. More importantly, as an educated graduate student in smart cities, it will now be my responsibility to create a ripple effect about my knowledge in sustainability, and to become an ambassador for driving positive actions that will address climate change challenges. I feel now that, regardless of my future career and professional opportunities, sustainability will always be part of my working values.

Overall, I believe the SMACCs programme is one of the best available learning opportunities for any city professionals. I can confidently say that being part of the programme changed my life forever. But more importantly, I believe that the knowledge we obtained can be used to change the lives of people around us and the environment we are living with. I will always be thankful to SMACCs because they empowered me to be someone who can bring positive change to cities and to people.