Prof. Owen McIntyre wins UNIC Best CityLab Award for Sustainability Law CityLab

30 May 2025

Prof. Owen McIntyre is co-awardee of the UNIC Best CityLab Award for the sustainability law CityLab initiative entitled ‘Perspectives on Sustainability’, hosted at University College Cork in June 2024.

The win is shared with the co-organisers of the initiative, Dr Alberto Quintavalla and Renée Knoop of Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). 

The Best CityLab Award recognises outstanding CityLab initiatives that apply innovative and impactful methodologies to address societal challenges in Europe’s post-industrial cities. UNIC CityLabs are applied, living, collaborative initiatives and challenges being tackled through partnership between our universities, cities, and citizens. They are a key engagement tool of the UNIC Centre for City Futures, a transnational urban living laboratory for societal impact and “one stop shop” for UNIC universities to engage with cities and communities on pressing urban challenges. 

The winning CityLab initiative was a collaboration between EUR and UCC, developed from a module of the same name by Alberto and Renée. The course examined the manner in which the concept of sustainable development has permeated society and shaped policies, laws, and practices. Building on the work of the UNIC Centre for City Futures, the duo added a comparative element to the teaching mix by bringing their students together with students and researchers from UCC, as well as local stakeholders, all discussing and reflecting on the challenges that stood before two post-industrial cities, Rotterdam and Cork.  

Owen delivered a vibrant programme for EUR and UCC students at UCC on June 6, including engagement with Cork County Council to apply their learning to real-life scenarios. They then had the opportunity to hear from a wide range of UCC thought leaders at the ‘College of Business and Law Sustainability Showcase’ on June 7.  The programme  included an introduction to an engaged research project carried out at UCC: the PROCOMMS project (Promoting Resilient Cities through Community Participation and Communication of Climate and Disaster Risks). PROCOMMS is a pilot project funded by UNIC seed funding; it aims to promote networks and connections between urban stakeholders in Cork and Malmö and to identify good practices for community participation in climate change adaptation. 

This award-winning CityLabs initiative is a proof of concept of a groundbreaking model of applied learning and collaborative engagement, and serves as a dynamic platform through which students across cities can engage with peers, researchers, citizens, and city stakeholders – including municipalities, the private sector, and NGOs – from across the continent. In this way, learning and sharing become opportunities for co-creation, knowledge exchange, and meaningful reform. 

"We started by outlining and explaining the theoretical dimensions of sustainable development and all the legal, economic, and policy aspects that revolve around it,” said Alberto Quintavalla. “Then, we decided that this knowledge was very theoretical, and we wanted to put it into practice. So, we wanted to confront students with what sustainable development actually is at a municipal level or in practical settings." 

UNIC is co-funded by the European Union.