News

The Future Cities Institute founded by CAIVAN partnered with Velocity to host the Future Cities Innovation Challenge. The high-intensity, two-week sprint brought interdisciplinary student teams together to build data-backed business concepts targeting the Canadian housing crisis, modern infrastructure demands, and municipal service systems.

The Future Cities Institute founded by CAIVAN sponsored lunch at the Ontario’s Big City Mayors (OBCM) meeting in Waterloo. Connecting with over 65 mayors, Chief Administrative Officers, and policy staff from across the province, Director Dr. Leia Minaker presented the institute’s applied research capabilities and work-integrated student programs designed to tackle pressing, real-world municipal challenges.

Graduate students from the Master of Future Cities (MFC) program recently returned from an intensive, two-week field course in Singapore. Organized by the Future Cities Institute founded by CAIVAN, this experiential learning trip allowed students to step out of the classroom and see how long-term foresight, multi-purpose infrastructure, and high-density housing strategies are deployed in the real world.

The Future Cities Institute founded by CAIVAN has appointed veteran planner and transportation researcher Clarence Woudsma as Co-Director, Academic. Bringing three decades of applied expertise in logistics and mobility policy to the leadership team, Woudsma will steer the institute's academic direction and oversee the Master of Future Cities (MFC) graduate program, where students learn to develop data-backed approaches for building resilient communities.

The inaugural Faculty of Environment Capstone Symposium brought over 500 students, researchers, and industry professionals together to showcase applied, data-backed student research. Many of the graduating teams spent eight months collaborating on projects with FCI, developing actionable recommendations for real-world housing, mobility, and infrastructure challenges.

FCI and community partners hosted a BUILD NOW design workshop bringing newcomer-focused community organisations into direct conversation with the BUILD NOW team. Participants offered feedback on housing design, neighbourhood planning, and amenities, contributing firsthand knowledge to the early development of the region's largest affordable housing project.

The i-Capstone Symposium brought students, municipal leaders, and industry partners together for a day of final presentations on real urban challenges worked on throughout the term. University of Waterloo President Vivek Goel, Waterloo Mayor Dorothy McCabe, and representatives from the Region of Waterloo were among those in attendance. Student awards were supported by GLOCAL Foundation of Canada, AWS Canada, and the Global Futures Office, with the event made possible through the ongoing support of CAIVAN.

The FCI x Brave Career Hackathon challenged student teams to build AI-powered tools for pressing urban systems problems in a single day, from zoning and data fragmentation to infrastructure capacity. Grounded in real problem statements from the City of Kitchener, the event produced a strong set of ideas from teams that worked quickly and thought carefully about the complexity of the challenges in front of them.

Ten FCI co-op students from across disciplines spent a week in focused sprint working on two tools designed to support Northern communities: one for grant writing, one for community economic development planning. The work addressed real administrative and capacity gaps that smaller Northern municipalities face, and the cross-disciplinary makeup of the team brought a range of perspectives to problems that benefit from exactly that kind of scrutiny.

FCI brought over 60 planning students together with the BUILD NOW: Waterloo Region leadership team for a hands-on design charrette focused on Canada's largest affordable home ownership initiative. Students pressure-tested real concepts and offered grounded feedback, many as members of the very demographic BUILD NOW is designed to serve. A strong example of what academia and industry can produce when they work in the same room, toward the same problem.