Registration now open for MetroLab’s 2017 Annual Summit
Blog: Bright Spots in a Darkened Landscape
June 9, 2017: MetroLab Welcomes NC State & City of Raleigh
May 5, 2017: Cleveland State University joins MetroLab
New Guest Blog: Purposeful, Responsible, and Open Smart Cites
MetroLab’s 2016 Progress Report
December 1, 2016: MetroLab Announces Advisory Council
MetroLab Network includes 39 cities, 4 counties, and 53 universities, organized in more than 35 regional city-university partnerships. Partners focus on research, development, and deployment (RD&D) projects that offer technological and analytically-based solutions to challenges facing urban areas including: inequality in income, health, mobility, security and opportunity; aging infrastructure; and environmental sustainability and resiliency.
City-university partnerships are mutually-beneficial relationships in which the university is the city’s R&D department and the city is a test-bed. Faculty and students get access to real-life laboratories to test advanced approaches aimed at addressing city priorities and challenges. Cities, and their residents, benefit from technologies and policies that leverage digital and information technology, data analytics, sensing, and more.
Individually, city-university RD&D partnerships are beneficial and help drive innovative approaches in government. When networked together, they present an opportunity to scale effective solutions, accelerate best practices, and advance the understanding of urban science.
This primer includes 10 Principles for Successful City-University Partnerships for Urban Innovation.
Encourage formal, institutionalized, multi-disciplinary, multi-agency partnerships focused on RD&D. City-University partnerships can serve as innovation engines in city government that transcends political cycles and industry contracts.
Facilitate the scaling of successful RD&D approaches. Leverage the network to develop tools and resources that support collaborative efforts between cities and universities. Accelerate best practices, data standards, and methods.
Organize labs that bring together similar but previously uncoordinated efforts in different communities. Create a platform for multi-city multi-university teams to address complex, long-term challenges.