Sustainable Cities Research Project

The Towards Sustainable Cities is an initiative to stimulate activity in the IARU Energy, Resources and Environment (ERE) Global Change Project through a collaborative interdisciplinary partnership.

The projects have focused on integrative, "cross cutting questions" in relation to sustainability in cities, such as:

• What is the relationship between food production and land use in city regions?
• How will the flux of GHGs change depending on the land use change of cities?
• What is the relative food security in food export and import dependent cities?

The demonstration project approach has created a new research community by collaborating on three interlinked sub-projects, each led by one IARU partner.  The three sub-projects are:

• Food Flows and Ecosystem Services, lead by the Australian National University (ANU)
• Low Carbon Cities, lead by The University of Tokyo (UT)
• Land Use and Ecosystem Function lead by the University of Copenhagen (KU)

The project has now completed its demonstration stage.  Steps are now underway to expand into a larger research program involving more IARU partners on the theme of Human Wellbeing and Sustainable Cities.

Caption: Professor Kazuhiko (UT) addressing an audience at COP15 (Credit: Dr Matsuda)