Resilient Urban and Regional Planning Training Launched
On October 21, 2025, the Resilient Future Training was officially launched in the historic salon of the Künstlerhaus Vienna at Karlsplatz.
The event marked the conclusion of successful international cooperation within the framework of the two-year ERASMUS+ project URBAN MENUS Educational – Dialogue with a Resilient Future (trainingresilience.eu).
Designing New Buildings – A Multi-Stakeholder Challenge Then and Now
I had the honor of giving an opening speech. During my preparation, I found the connection between the Künstlerhaus—built by architect August Weber in 1868 in close coordination with representatives of the artists’ association—and our project quite interesting. It highlights the complex work, requiring great patience, of uniting diverse interests into a common endeavor. (It took about four years and numerous revisions before the artists’ association accepted Weber’s plans.)
Data Literacy, Participation Skills, and AI & VR Tools Facilitate the Work
In contemporary urban and regional development, the interests of public and private real estate developers, investors, academia, and citizens must be integrated. Economic, ecological, and socio-cultural assessments of scenarios, along with complex issues such as public transport accessibility, barrier-free design, equality, standards, and regulations, demand data literacy.
The Resilient Future Training teaches how to involve relevant stakeholders and how a consensus can be reached based on reliable data—for optimized and faster decision-making processes.
Launch Event Guests Tested Live Formats of the Resilient Future Training
The atmosphere at the launch event was fantastic: guests from business, politics, research, and education came together. They were not just an audience but also contributed their own ideas and tested the live training formats.
Laura’s team prepared the stations with great attention to detail: an AR station brought a card set with innovative ideas for sustainable development to life. In VR, guests could walk through a Sicilian village and experience both the current situation and potential future developments. Stakeholder relationships could be explored through role play: in the online version, the dynamics between individual stakeholders are visualized with virtual arrows—where agreement, disagreement, and resistance are shown in different colors—while at the launch event, these were made visible using woolen threads.
Fortune Cookies at the Buffet Pointed to the Future
A fantastic buffet catered to the attendees, with small culinary masterpieces created in the on-site kitchen. A charming highlight was the handmade paper fortune cookies with thoughtful messages. My quote fit the theme of sustainability perfectly:
Notice who waters the plants no one owns.
This serves as a perfect transition back to the motivation for our training: The future becomes resilient when we shape it together! Doing good even when no one is watching, contributing to the whole even if it might benefit oneself slightly less than others, and caring for what few feel specifically responsible for, but which affects us all—our shared environment.
A joint discussion on potential applications showed that the Resilient Future Training can unlock potential far beyond education, such as in the areas of security, integration, or conflict resolution.
More About the Project and Outcomes
Project Team
URBAN MENUS Educational – Dialogue with a Resilient Future ran from November 2023 to October 2025. Architect and urban planner Laura P. Spinadel / BUSarchitektur ZT GmbH (Vienna, AT) coordinated the project. Together with her team, she designed the learning journey and workshops and visually developed the training platform. Also from Austria was akaryon GmbH (Vienna, AT)—a long-standing URBAN MENUS IT partner, co-responsible for developing the training platform and focused on e-learning content regarding data collection, data management, and data gaps.
Il Punto Real Estate Advisor srl (Milan, IT) brought the perspective of real estate development to the training. The Global Governance Institute ASBL (Brussels, BE) contributed content on governance issues at the European level and supported the dissemination of the project at the EU level. LCI Barcelona (Barcelona, ES), a school of design and visual arts, co-designed the VR and AR experiences, brought the project to Barcelona Design Week, and built a bridge to the world of education. The associated partner in the field of innovation was Alissa Ban’kovska with Synchro Space (Kyiv, UA).
Resilient Future Training: E-Learning and Live Formats
The resulting training includes e-learning and live workshop formats.
The e-learning (which can be completed at your own pace) consists of two parts, each with four modules:
- The first part deepens data literacy: topics include resilience policies, database creation, impact assessment, and handling data gaps.
- The second part is dedicated to participation—the active involvement of stakeholders to work together on urban and regional future scenarios with impact—and also covers forecasting models. (Course language: English).
A cross-cutting theme is the use of Augmented and Virtual Reality tools, which facilitate urban and regional planning work.
The practical application of AR and VR tools is central to the live workshops, which include:
- In-person formats with working groups,
- a trade fair format with various stations, and
- an online format with breakout rooms.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.