Urban planning and urban environment are one of the key areas for cooperation between China and the Netherlands and the European Union more broadly. A workshop providing an opportunity to discuss and learn more about those issues was held at TU Delft on 9th and 10th April in Delft under the banner of the Urban Systems and Environment (USE) Joint Research Centre bringing together several faculties of South China University of Technology (SCUT) and of TU Delft.
The dense programme of the workshop included high-level speakers from both Universities involved in the joint centre as well as representatives of the leading architecture and civil engineering companies (e.g. Mecanoo, Arup), the Dutch government (PBL, Ministry of Economy) and the Chinese Embassy in the Netherlands.
The rooster of excellent speakers, the broad participation and the high quality of the debates proved that urban systems and urban environment are topics generating strong interest both within the academia (notably during his speech TU Delft’s President, Dirk Jan van den Berg identified urbanism as one of the University’s flagship research areas) and outside of it. Importantly, this interest appears to be growing, with more and more actors involved in the dialogue and joint research endeavours both at TU Delft and SCUT. The workshop also served as an opportunity to take stock of the research and educational activities undertaken under the auspices of the Joint Research Centre to date and discuss the options and directions for future collaborative initiatives, events and research projects.
Poster for the workshop
