News

Researchers and network partners connected with the Future Cities Institute have secured new SSHRC funding to advance data-backed climate resilience and municipal policy tools. Spanning municipal net-zero implementation, property-level flood risk intelligence, virtual reality disaster planning, and international cyclone adaptation, these newly funded initiatives demonstrate how academic research turns into usable, real-world tools for city builders.

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.

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.

This video recap of FCI's BUILD NOW design charrette features Philip Mills and Scott Higgins on what it meant to have students as genuine collaborators, and FCI Director Dr. Leia Minaker on why applied, grounded engagement sits at the core of FCI's work. Over 60 planning students, many of them the demographic BUILD NOW is designed to serve, brought real ideas and challenged assumptions in a working session with the BUILD NOW: Waterloo Region leadership team.

FCI researchers attended the Nunavut Economic Development Association Conference in Iqaluit to present and pilot an AI-powered Community Economic Development Planning Tool with community leaders and administrators. Workshops surfaced real challenges around fragmented planning, connectivity, and language access, and reinforced FCI's grounding principle that responsible, effective tools are built only after listening closely to the people they are meant to serve.

Director Leia Minaker joined Philip Mills for a conversation on BUILD NOW: Waterloo Region, drawing on real examples in front of a room of practitioners and municipal leaders engaged in how cities grow and change. At the FCI booth, co-op students Aster Penney, Len Dizdar, and Weixi Zhou shared updates on two active projects, the Growth Management Tool and the newly updated Vision 1 Million Scorecard, fielding questions with confidence throughout the morning. It was a productive opportunity to connect with municipal staff and industry colleagues, and to hear firsthand what people are working on across the region.