Visit of NYU Shanghai’s Key Laboratory of Urban Design and Urban Science to the Institute for Studies in Green Management, Xiamen University

Reprinted from the official WeChat account of the Institute for Studies in Green Management, Xiamen University

Recently, a delegation of four members led by Professor Chenghe Guan, Co-Director of the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Urban Design and Urban Science (hereinafter referred to as “LOUD”), visited our institute.

Professor Zhang Bo, Dean of the Institute for Studies in Green Management, extended a warm welcome to the LOUD research team. He introduced the background of the institute’s establishment and its current development vision, and briefly outlined its key research areas, including green finance, ESG, green operations, green industries, green consumption, and green governance.

Professor Chenghe Guan presented an overview of LOUD and its proposed five-year development plan. The LOUD research team shared their research agenda and latest progress in areas such as urban lightweight development, transformation of resource-based cities, and climate-adaptive parks. They highlighted innovative achievements in cutting-edge fields including carbon source–sink assessment of mangrove wetlands, urban human–bird soundscape mapping, and perception of urban plant biodiversity.

During the roundtable discussion, participating faculty members and students engaged in in-depth exchanges on research and management practice issues related to urban park studies and climate-oriented urban parks, urban lightweight development and lightweight cities, smart city sensing, low-carbon and resilient cities, healthy and happy cities, as well as computational social science and the digital energy economy. They also conducted preliminary discussions on potential future academic collaborations at the intersection of urban science and green management.

The visit of the LOUD research team created new opportunities for the institute to expand external cooperation. Both sides expressed their commitment to actively promoting regular exchanges between relevant research institutions at NYU Shanghai and the Institute for Studies in Green Management at Xiamen University. They plan to pursue in-depth collaboration on interdisciplinary research in urban science, data-sharing mechanisms, and joint training models, thereby contributing to the scientific governance and sustainable development of China’s cities and urban agglomerations.

Introduction to the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Urban Design and Urban Science

The Shanghai Key Laboratory of Urban Design and Urban Science (LOUD) was approved and established in 2022 by the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission. LOUD is the first provincial- and ministerial-level key laboratory at NYU Shanghai. Drawing on the university’s multidisciplinary strengths in urban science, social sciences, environmental sciences, and data science, LOUD focuses on frontier research in computational urban science applied to planning, primarily covering the two fields of urban design and urban science.

LOUD’s three main research directions are:

Digital spatiotemporal analysis of cities and sustainable planning and design;

Low-carbon urban development and simulation in the context of global climate change;

Applications of urban sensing artificial intelligence technologies in environmentally sensitive urban blue–green infrastructure.

Focusing on successful practices in China’s urban development, LOUD has built a multidisciplinary team of experts in urban planning and design, urban ecology, urban geography, and data science. The laboratory is committed to building bridges between Chinese and international academic communities to foster shared thinking and expanded collaboration.

Source | Institute for Studies in Green Management, Xiamen University; Shanghai Key Laboratory of Urban Design and Urban Science
Author | Yang Shuang
Review | Li Huizhu
Editor | Zhang Bo