How do craftsmen perceive visions of car-free inner cities? What are there worries and needs? And how will they move around in our cities in ten, twenty or more years? In a project with Mercedes-Benz Vans, 50 bachelor and master students from Macromedia University Berlin surprised their cooperating partner with convincing smart urban mobility solutions.
Future mobility scenarios for craftsmanship in car-free cities are a rather rare thing to find. This segment that is so present in cityscapes appears to be in an early stage of development with respect to innovative solutions to cope with environmental and mobility problems. Concepts stem from ITC providers, car producers, municipalities, consultancies or research institutions in most cases. But what is the craftsmanship’s position on this? Which belief systems and pains slow down the willingness to adapt new concepts? What do they expect from digitalization? How does their service readiness look like, and towards what technology concepts are they open to? Under guidance of Prof. Dr. Brigitte Kleinselbeck, Prof. Thomas Stegmann and Armin Scheu, Head of Smart City at Mercedes-Benz Vans, students from the four international study programs – International Management B.A., Media and Communication Management B.A., Media and Communication Management M.A. and Smart City Design M.A. – presented in 14 teams their results on a very high level.
Two teams especially thrilled the smart city jurors. Louise Wimert and Olivia Wollheim, both fourth semester student in Media and Communication Management (B.A.), were honored as “Best Presentation”. They chose Stockholm as city example, analyzed the market, mobility and needs, and developed a transport system covering logistics docks, underground freight trains, inner city logistic centres, and electric transport systems that also work with buses and street trains.
A Smart City Design master team won the „Best Use Case“ and "Audience Award" prizes. Alicia Baeck, Rocio Ten Excalant, Tugan Türeli and Xihong Ma consider cities as vibrant organisms with a repeating 24-hours rhythm, and developed with the idea „Citainer Logistics“ a solution around green cityscapes, public transport and smart containers that function as interactive Docking Gardens. "Students may be very proud of their performance. I’m highly impressed how all of them got involved with our company, craftsmen’s needs, but also residents," Armin Scheu commented. "Results have shown once again, that we need to deal with the green aspects of city solutions even stronger because willingness to adapt new solutions increases this way." All students received certificates, and were offered career options. Congratulations.
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