Designing a Personalized Learning Journey for the Promotion of Smart and Sustainable Cities

Smart cities are an answer for population concentration in urban centers and for the socioeconomic and environmental challenges inherent in this context. Additionally, they are characterized by generating a high volume of data, with the potential to contribute to city development and the implementation of necessary interventions for resilience and recovery in possible crises. In the complexity of this ecosystem, there is a requirement to prepare professionals specialized in open data and resilience in smart cities. This line of thinking converges toward a proposal of “lean education” whose principles and practices focus on lean management, delivering value based on the beneficiaries’ demands. In this sense, the objective is to answer the following research question: How can a personalized learning journey for city officials contribute to the digital and sustainable transformation process of smart cities? To achieve this, the development of personalized learning journeys focusing on smart cities will be analyzed in two European projects that unfold in the following approaches: open data and city resilience. The methodological procedures are designed based on the steps of design science research. The results point to the development of skills that contribute to socio-technical systems such as cities, with tools available to European local governments, associations, and other stakeholders interested in the subject. Thus, it can be concluded that this agile and personalized didactic approach is aligned with the inherent dynamism of sustainable and smart cities.