Smart and Sustainable Cities: New Ways of Digitalization & Governance

Smart and Sustainable Cities: New Ways of Digitalization & Governance, offered by DelftX through edX, is an intermediate-level online course designed to examine how cities can become more sustainable and resilient through stronger governance and smarter use of digital tools. The course focuses on the role of urban planners, policymakers, and managers in shaping smart, sustainable city initiatives and responds to challenges such as stakeholder engagement, conflicting interests, uncertainty, spatial justice, and digital transformation. Developed as a spin-off of the EU-funded Cap4City project, it brings together expertise from universities in Latin America and Europe.

Core Content

The curriculum covers the principles for incentivising, planning, developing, and managing smart sustainable city initiatives, while also presenting the main drivers and barriers affecting their success. It explores sustainability challenges, governance capacity, stakeholder engagement, co-creation pathways, and the regulatory and legal issues linked to privacy, cybersecurity, and data governance. The course also introduces a smart city governance roadmap and uses case studies from Latin America across areas such as urban transportation, participatory budgeting, safety, and waste management, always connecting them back to governance and sustainability.

Key Skills

Participants will develop the ability to understand the main governance challenges involved in smart, sustainable city development and assess the approaches needed to address them effectively. The course helps learners build skills in co-creation, stakeholder engagement, governance planning, digital innovation, close monitoring, and risk mitigation. It also supports a stronger understanding of how data governance, legal frameworks, and institutional capacity influence the success of smart city initiatives in practice.

Target Learners

This course is designed for urban planners, policymakers, managers, and professionals involved in sustainability, governance, and digital transformation in cities. It is particularly relevant for those who want to understand how smart city initiatives can be sustained and governed over time, especially in contexts where participation, uncertainty, and interdependent urban problems shape decision-making. Because the course is listed as intermediate level, it is well-suited to learners seeking a more applied and governance-focused perspective on sustainable urban development.

Learning Format

Hosted on edX, the course is delivered in a self-paced online format with an estimated duration of six weeks. External course listings indicate a study effort of around four to five hours per week, and the course is moderated in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. As with other edX courses, it is available online with flexible pacing, making it suitable for professionals balancing study with work or project commitments.

Additional Benefits

The course offers practical value for learners who want to strengthen their understanding of smart city governance through real regional examples and applied policy challenges. Its connection to the Cap4City project and its development by experts from multiple universities in Latin America and Europe give it a strong international and practice-oriented perspective. The combination of governance tools, digitalization themes, and sustainability case work makes it especially useful for those involved in long-term urban transformation and resilient city planning.

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