A UK university is using Lego bricks to teach students how future technology can improve city living.

Birmingham City University will use Lego in its teaching when it launches its “Co-developing a real Smart City” training workshop later this year. Participants will learn about smart city development using Lego Serious Play as a tool to visualise change.

Aimed at city planners and authorities, metropolitan mayors, city councillors, government advisors, policymakers and related disciplines, the one to five-day course covers how communication between systems, processes, data, people and technology can help address urbanisation issues such as traffic congestion, pollution, health, infrastructure and waste management.

The short course will use the Lego Serious Play method to address problem solving through building 3D models to illustrate how different components of a smart city can interact with one another to improve personal and professional lives. This process will equip participants with the understanding and skills to employ smart technology and engineering processes in the real world.

The course will be delivered by Vahid Javidroozi, a senior research fellow at Birmingham City University’s school of computing and digital technology, who has been researching and teaching smart city subjects, especially city systems integration and city process change topics, since 2013.

“The eight years of academic research, development and teaching experience behind this course makes it a novel and unique learning experience, which will enhance the participants’ knowledge for developing a real smart city and for progressing their current smart city projects,” said Javidroozi. “The term real means that despite usual smart city courses and projects, which mainly focus on a particular aspect, especially the technology, this course provides a comprehensive learning regarding all features of smart cities. Covering the necessities, challenges and building blocks in a structured and academic manner, participants can design a holistic view of their smart cities, which will help them to realise their status and develop their smart city roadmap.”

The course will be launched alongside a short paper-writing workshop, which will enable those taking part to learn, prepare and produce an academic paper for publication in just eight weeks.

Designed to demystify the process of writing a paper for publication, converting research ideas, and mapping out project output, organisational achievements and research progress into a paper in collaboration with other peers, those signing up to the course will be trained to prepare a high-quality paper for publication in a short period of time.

“University staff have state-of-the-art knowledge and skills in many technologies while also advancing and creating new understanding through research and development activities,” said Hanifa Shah, executive dean at Birmingham City University’s faculty of computing, engineering and built environment. “We are delighted to offer innovative workshops around our exciting research topics such as smart cities. Our research is applied in nature and closely related to finding solutions to issues and problems faced by industry and society. We are experts at publishing our work in leading academic journals and conferences. Through our series of workshops, we are pleased to share this expertise more widely.”