The City as a Living Lab: Lessons Learned from Virtual Collaborative Planning Education in the Global North and South

Rapid urbanisation, climate change, and informality (unregulated housing and insecure land tenure) present both opportunities and challenges for future planners, underscoring the need for globally informed and locally grounded planning education. This article applies a reflective case study approach to analyse new practices and continuous pedagogical development of a joint planning course at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences (Finland) and the Namibia University of Science and Technology to address these contemporary urban challenges. The article further explores how Urban Living Labs (ULL) can be applied in real-world learning and stakeholder engagement in an international learning context. While digital tools like GIS are widely used in the Global North, their integration into bottom-up, participatory planning remains limited in the Global South, demonstrating the need for context-sensitive technological application. Ultimately, the comparison reveals more commonalities than differences, emphasising the potential of international academic cooperation. The jointly developed international and interdisciplinary course illustrates how mutual learning and virtual collaboration can take place in two parallel urban living labs simultaneously in the Global North and South, supported by a quadruple-helix model and today’s digital tools for online interaction. This reduces the need to travel and promotes more sustainable and inclusive models of international education.