On 1 July 2024, within the frame of Erasmus+ project UniCities, the challenge-driven summer school “Shaping urban environments for tomorrow”, which link architecture, urbanism, sociology, еcology and policy-making to elaborate strategies for global challenges in different local contexts in the cities of Eastern and Western Europe, was opened.

Students in various specialties and teachers of the Chernihiv Polytechnic National University and partner universities from the UniCities project are participating in the summer school. The attendees will work in a mixed format, online and offline (two locations – on the basis of the Chernihiv Polytechnic National University, at the established university-city collaboration center “UNICITIES”, and on the basis of the National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”.

During the summer school, the attendees will learn the principles of the integrated approach to elaborate strategies based on the key findings of the interdisciplinary and multiscale empirical research.

The summer school will provide its attendees with an amazing opportunity to gain international experience in solving complex problems for sustainable development and climate neutrality of cities. Thanks to it, an important step will be taken for the modern development of Ukrainian cities.

Students and teachers will take part in various lectures, seminars, trainings, discussions, and will work in project groups for five days.

On the first day, the summer school attendees got to know each other. The team of the NU “Chernigov Polytechnic” was introduced by the project manager from our University Kazymyr Volodymyr Viktorovich. The attendees also listened to the lecture by project coordinator Olga Kordas (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm) on the topic “New European Bauhaus and other strategic documents of the European Union in the context of adaptation to climate change: key principles, values. Impact and applied significance for recovery policy in Ukraine”, as well as the lecture by Oleksii Pasichnyi (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm) “Technological solutions to ensure climate neutrality in cities. Experience of Sweden”. Participants divided into groups and chose a project topic related to the restoration of the campus of the National University “Chernihiv Polytechnic”.

In addition, a meeting with representatives of the National University “Chernigov Polytechnic” Vasyl Karabanov (Vice-rector for administrative and economic work) and Serhiy Bezborodko (Director of the Startup Creation and Development Center of Chernihiv Polytechnic National University) was held.

The first day of the summer school turned out to be extremely eventful, interesting, full of new experiences, new acquaintances and communication!