Life in the city of the future

Reading Time: Minutes

The module "Living in the city of the future" includes a video which is accompanied by various small interactive quizzes to support your learning progress. You are introduced to the topic in short, informative chapters and gain a deeper insight into the subject through our interview with futurologist Max Thinius. In the "action" part of the video, we offer a valuable impulse to take action yourself. Finally, you will find further links on the topic of smart cities in the module.

Topic: Life in the city of the future
Target Group: Adults accompanying children (9-16 years) such as parents, teachers, educational professionals
Duration: 19:40 min
Format: Interactive educational video in H5P

Smart cities

Here you will find the video in easy language on the topic of "Smart Cities". Use the video in various learning situations to explore what will make cities of the future smart and how they are already helping us to be more sustainable today.

Go to video

Competence development

In the video "Living in the city of the future", you can find out what is behind terms such as "smart home" and "smart city" and what influence digital technologies will have on the urban society of tomorrow.

Explicitly learn,

what a smart city is,

what opportunities smart cities offer,

what challenges smart cities face in terms of surveillance,

what you can do to protect your privacy,

what citizens can do to make cities even smarter,

why data-based analyses are important for smart cities,

what digital nomads are,

an example of a sustainable city (Rotterdam)

Options for action:

Opportunities for citizen participation
Crowdsourcing project Weathermap to collect real-time weather data,

Results-oriented action in the new media based on solid technical and methodological knowledge,

filter essential information from a wide range of information with a critical distance and make conscious decisions.

Strengthening the initiative by learning innovative ways of using new media so that they can be used in the workplace, in the social environment, in leisure time and at home.

The most important information at a glance

A smart city involves not only technological changes (new energies, new means of transportation, etc.), but also social changes (improved quality of life, solidarity). However, smart cities use digital technologies to meet these challenges and create sustainable living spaces by intelligently connecting different areas of public life.

This includes innovative living concepts that promote communal living and sustainable housing as well as flexible working models that make it easier to combine work and leisure.

With SDG 11, the United Nations have set themselves the goal of creating liveable, inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities. Connectivity and data analysis play a crucial role in this by transforming the physical world into data, analysing and visualizing it.

New technologies can have a decisive value for our environment and for sustainable living. Crowdsourcing platforms can help to make smarter decisions in urban design to make people's lives more pleasant, efficient and sustainable.

Find out about hate speech, what you can do about it and whether you are able to learn how to stand up for others in the digital space in our interactive module "digital civil courage" Digital civil courage