Summary of the Project
UBeX lab aims to transform urban planning and real estate education through the integration of cutting-edge eXtended Reality (XR) technologies. The project is a collaboration within the Urban Systems & Real Estate unit of the Department of Built Environment. It spans four courses and a graduation project. Through the lab, future engineers will learn next-generation skills allowing them to integrate XR into participatory urban planning, and urban experiments as well as modelling and prediction of citizens’ behaviour in various urban contexts.
The lab setup includes advanced hardware and software, with which XR environments and challenge-based assignments are created procedurally so that they can be easily reused and expanded by the students. Over three years, the lab will run multiple pilot projects, aiming to enrich education, boost student engagement, and provide teachers with innovative tools for course development.
Aim of the Project
The project aspires to transform how urban planning and design are taught, aligning with the TU/e Education Vision 2030. It emphasizes research- and challenge-based learning, preparing students for complex societal challenges in mobility, housing, and environmental sustainability. The innovation targets incremental changes in teaching
methodologies and learning outcomes, such as mastering XR technology, conducting participatory design experiments, and translating behavioural data into actionable urban policies. Ultimately, the project aims to foster a dynamic, future-oriented learning environment that bridges academic theory and practical application.
Results and learnings
The first two pilots were run in the academic year 2024-2025.
- In the Master course Smart Healthy Urban Environments, the assignments on Green City and Social & Inclusive City introduced VR technology and showed how to use it to measure preferences for green spaces and for citizen participation.
Photo 1: During the tutorial SHUE, the CoHeSIVE VR application was used by the EWUU Alliance and developed in collaboration with TU/e and WANDER Lab.
- In Master project Housing portfolio management, a challenge requires students to set up a participatory experiment for a community of social tenants, to assess the support for renovation plans. XR environments were added as a tool to increase the realism of the experiment.
Photo 2: During the tutorial Housing Portfolio: left the real street; right the same street mimicked in UBeX XR for the purpose of the experiment.
Students participated in both pilots with great enthusiasm; attendance and engagement reached 100%. At the moment, evaluation of the pilots is ongoing, to derive learnings for the next pilots to be run.
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