Last week our doctoral researcher Lucas van der Meer went to Munich to attend the MobilTUM conference. This is a conference organized by the Chair of Urban Structure and Transport Planning at the Technical University of Munich, focusing on the future of mobility and urban space. Special attention was paid to the concept of the 15-minute city, and its implementation in practice.

Lucas talked about the potential and challenges of urban digital twin technology in the context of 15-minute cities. Can urban digital twins be more than just a hype? Can they be of practical use in the planning process when we are aware of their limitations, and honest about them in our interpretation and communication? What questions can we actually ask them? And where do humans fit in? These are all questions that together with our project partners we aim to address within the European research project CITWIN, moving towards a socio-technical perspective on urban digital twins with explicit human involvement in all phases of the feedback loop. Interested in the project? Follow CITWIN on LinkedIn and reach out to us if you have comments, questions, ideas, or more.

A big thank you to the organizing team at TU Munich for creating such an interesting and (most importantly) enjoyable event. We had fun, made many new connections, received a lot of feedback, and hope to be back next time!