The Danish Center for Spatial Planning

Societal development is continuously expressed in changes in the spatial environment. It can be noticed in changes in the built environment in cities and towns as well as in land use in rural areas. Spatial planning is concerned with attempts to understand and analyse such changes, and in particular to discuss activities and actions with the intention to influence changes in the spatial environment.

The Danish Centre for Spatial Planning (DCSP) therefore intends to understand spatial change processes and challenges and how they are dealt with – in particular how they are coordinated, organised, facilitated, regulated and administrated. This entails a wide spectrum of more substantial themes, sectors and challenges, such as:

• Sustainable land use in regions, cities, communities, and in rural areas
• Climate change planning – mitigation and adaptation strategies from EU to local levels
• Smart Cities & Regions. Integrated policies and solutions.
• Innovative, creative and knowledge-based regions and cities
• Inclusive regions, cities and communities
• Urban regions – between polycentric and monocentric development
• Slow cities, Ageing cities and demographic challenges to urban as well as rural development
• Qualitative development in peripheral regions and communities
• Coordination of actions: challenges and synergies in regional and urban governance and planning
• Evidence-based policies (EU, ESPON, national and regional)

DCSP is a platform for knowledge interaction and networking activities concerned with spatial development and planning. The centre is committed to cooperation on all scales with practitioners, authorities, consultants, and other researchers. It seeks to look across the varied spectrum of planning activities in a search for the new settings and roles that spatial planning adopts in societal development.

DCSP is comprised mainly by researchers from the Department of Planning and Department of Architecture, Design & Media Technology at Aalborg University.