SDG 11 : Sustainable Cities and Communities

Access to convenient public transport can make it easier for students to travel between campus and the wider city without relying on a car. In 2025, University of Limerick (UL) worked with TFI Local Link Limerick Clare and Student Life to raise awareness of the new Anseo on-demand bus service among the UL community.

Anseo connects the UL campus with Limerick city centre and Rhebogue and operates seven days a week from 6.30am to 11pm. Unlike a conventional scheduled bus service, journeys are booked through an app.

After identifying that the new service was operating without promotion specifically targeting UL students, UL's Smarter Travel Campus Co-ordinator organised a campus launch in November 2025. TFI Local Link Limerick Clare was invited to campus, where its team met Student Life representatives and worked with Student Life's marketing team to produce a launch video. Information about the service was also promoted through leaflets and digital screens on campus.

The UL launch video received more than 40,000 views. Separately, TFI Local Link reported more than 4,000 app bookings across Anseo during the service’s first three months. The National Transport Authority subsequently announced that the pilot would continue.

University of Limerick's (UL) Rooftop Garden shows how even a relatively small space can be used to grow food and bring people together. Throughout the growing season, staff and student volunteers meet weekly to grow organic vegetables, fruit and wildflowers in pots, containers and raised beds.

The garden gives volunteers practical experience of growing their own food and demonstrates approaches that can be used where conventional garden space is limited. Participants learn gardening skills and recipes, with organic farmer Jim Cronin providing expertise and guidance to the group.

It is also a shared social and volunteering space on campus. The group meets every Thursday from mid-March to early December, giving staff and students a regular opportunity to step away from their usual work or study and take part in a practical outdoor activity. Student volunteers can record their participation towards the President's Volunteer Award.

Shared green spaces can provide places for people to meet, learn and spend time together, but they work best when they reflect what the community itself wants from them. In 2025, University of Limerick (UL) students worked with residents and community organisations on King’s Island to revitalise a local community garden.

As their final-year project, students from UL’s Community Wellness, Empowerment, Leadership and Lifeskills (CWELL) programme carried out extensive consultation with local residents, groups and organisations to understand what the community wanted from the space. Working with Limerick Growing Communities and the King’s Island community, they helped turn those ideas into plans for the garden.

The project also involved children from St Mary’s National School, who took part in an art competition to design a logo for the newly named Island Gardens.

In May 2025, the revitalised garden was relaunched with a family-friendly event during Limerick’s Local Development Week. The garden continues to be used by the community as a social and learning space.

The history of a community lives not only in buildings and archives, but in the memories and stories of the people who live there. In 2025, University of Limerick (UL) students worked with the King’s Island community to record and preserve local folklore, memories and photographs for future generations.

Students from UL’s Community Wellness, Empowerment, Leadership and Lifeskills (CWELL) and Professional Diploma in Community Engagement programmes developed the King’s Island Folklore Commission following research and consultation with the local community. They recorded residents sharing local stories and memories and brought these together in a short film, The Stories, Volume One.

The students also worked with children at St Mary’s National School to encourage an interest in local history and pride of place. They provided resources and toolkits to help pupils continue collecting photographs and recording podcasts for a school exhibition. The project also preserved historical photographs of local businesses and social life, including images from photographer Tamara Eckhardt’s The Kids of King’s Island exhibition.

The project was launched at King John’s Castle on 21 May 2025. Following the project, the students were invited to explore a future collaboration with the Irish Community Archive Network, creating a potential route for the material collected on King’s Island to become part of a permanent community archive.

How can residents explore and discuss possible futures for their city? In summer 2025, University of Limerick (UL) worked with Limerick City and County Council to develop an interactive model through which people could examine proposals for Limerick’s development, including accessible public spaces and city-centre decarbonisation.

Through the School of Architecture and Product Design's summer Intelligence Unit, the One City Revisited project developed and expanded a physical 1:500 model of Limerick city at CityLab on UL's City Centre Campus. The model was designed as an interactive tool through which different scenarios for the future development of the city could be explored.

Replaceable and rapidly printed components allowed different proposals to be explored on the model. The work considered Limerick’s Development Plan and Climate Action Plan, including public spaces designed for different uses and accessible to everyone, and approaches to decarbonising the city centre.

The public was invited to engage directly with the work through two City Model – Future Limerick events in August 2025, including an event during National Heritage Week. The initiative formed part of continuing collaboration between UL and Limerick City and County Council through their membership of the European Network of Living Labs.