Overview

The APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscape Research Hub has been set up in response to the increasing concerns about the sustainability of cities due to the worldwide rapidly increasing population and resulting urbanization. As a consequence sustainability is becoming a key issue for urban planners, civil engineers and design professionals. The demand for a more environmentally responsive cities grows while modern society is becoming more and more dependent on use of energy and new technologies in nearly every aspect of life. Urbanization has a major impact on the environment and influences landscapes to a great extend beyond the city boundaries through increasing air temperature, changing water cycles and ecological processes. Urban and landscape sustainability go hand-in-hand and it is not possible to understand one without understanding the interdependencies between cities and their surroundings. The University of Oregon, internationally leading in sustainable urban design and landscape planning through the renowned Sustainable Cities Initiative and its Landscape Architecture and Planning, Public Policy and Management programs, is hosting the APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes Research Hub. The Hub aims to engage with cross disciplinary experts, government officials and external organizations to consider Asia Pacific cities in the context of their many landscape interdependencies including services, networks and systems within and beyond the urban periphery, compare existing practices and models of city- landscape interactions across the region and initiate solutions and policy interventions to make entire city-landscape metabolism more sustainable.