70% of Denmark's population is living in urban areas and approximately 65% of Denmark's land is farming land (rural areas). At global scale it is expected that the picture will be the same within the next ten years. Therefore we have to face future sustainability challenges like climate change and sustainable living in an urban and rural context.

The need for sustainable living

A sustainable society will contain new kinds of production regimes; trans-disciplinary planning across sectors; and in everyday life, a need for new skills and understanding to ‘read’ sustainable living as new possibilities for development and new kinds of growth. All these topics call for new research based knowledge, due to the fact that “sustainability” is expected to be a future global development possibility; for creation of new jobs and a more equal sharing of the earth’s limited resources and socio-economic prosperity. Therefore, sustainability is very much viewed as a goal that requires cross-disciplinary planning, assessment, development, and research. On this backdrop the Sustainable Cities (SusCi) research group was established in 2010.

Partners of the Sustainable Cities research group

In line with this, the Sustainable Cities research group is a cross-disciplinary group, formed by members that are associated with other research groups within Aalborg University.

These include

• Sustainable Energy Planning
• Danish Centre for Environmental Assessment (DCEA)
• Sustainability, Innovation and Policy (SIP).

The key role of SusCi at present is to combine the inter-disciplinary knowledge of the three groups. In line with this objective, we are currently developing a new Sustainable Cities Master  program, which will begin in September 2012. This will focus on the challenges relating to climate, energy and the environment within a future sustainable city perspective.

In addition, the group is also completing a number of research  projects at present which relate to all three issues being considered in the new Sustainable Cities Master program: climate, energy and the environment.