On May 14, the opening ceremony of the “Expert Forum on City Clusters Sustainable Governance” and its first episode was initiated online, themed innovative development of city clusters and metropolitan areas. The forum was hosted by the Office of Research, co-organized by Beijing Key Laboratory of Megaregions Sustainable Development Simulation, co-hosted by the Institute for Economic and Social Development of Mega Cities, and supported by multiple platforms including inter-discipline of urban economics and strategic administration, innovative youth team on city and regional development management and Center for Population and Development Research. The forum was synchronously broadcast on Tencent Meeting, WeChat Official Account of Beijing Key Laboratory of Megaregions Sustainable Development Simulation and Bilibili website. This forum attracted more than 2000 real-time audience on multiple platforms and got extensive attention from the academia and industry of urban research and planning.

With the theme of innovative development of city clusters and metropolitan areas, the forum conducted in-depth discussions on the sustainable development of city clusters, construction of living environment and the innovation mechanism integration of city clusters through dialogues between interdisciplinary masters in economy, urban planning and geography. It has facilitated the theoretical and practical research on new urbanization and city clusters and metropolitan areas in the new era, building a platform for urban scholars in different fields to communicate and cooperate with one another. 

The opening ceremony was presided over by Professor Wu Kang, Director of Beijing Key Laboratory of Megaregions Sustainable Development Modelling. Yao Dongxu, Director of Office of Research, delivered an address and extended his sincere welcome to all the guests attending the forum and introduced the construction of CUEB’s platform about city research. He also pointed out that with complicated systems of mega-cities and city clusters impacted by various factors, we aim to integrate multidisciplinary theoretical thinking and research methods to deepen sustainable development of city clusters and metropolitan areas.

Yao Dongxu delivers a speech. Wu Kang presides over the meeting

The invited symposium was chaired by Ye Tanglin, the executive Vice President of Megalopolis Economic and Social Development Institute. Fang Chuanglin, academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences and distinguished researcher of Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor Yin Zhi from School of Architecture, Tsinghua University and Professor Lu Ming from Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University gave excellent speeches respectively. Fang Chuanglin gave a report on the main ways, basic ideas and approaches of constructing city clusters of carbon neutrality. Yin Zhi advocated to explore scientific problems of the complex system of living environment and introduced vividly the model optimization of the complex giant system with a large number of cases. Lu Ming compared city clusters in reality with those in planning with the help of big data of traffic flow, and proposed the development philosophy of “realizing integration, making the pie bigger, and then dividing it properly” by taking regional market segmentation as an example.

Fang Chuanglin, Yin Zhi, Lu Ming give reports. Ye Tanglin chairs the meeting

The later Panel Discussion was presided over by Tong Yufen, professor from the School of Labor Economics. The speakers discussed a variety of issues, such as the role of city clusters in the improvement of new urbanization, the development mechanism of city clusters, metropolitan areas and economic circles, and the relationship between county urbanization and new urbanization, etc. Besides, they offered great answers to questions proposed by online audiences.

Tong Yufen moderates the dialogue

This forum provided an exchange platform for multidisciplinary experts and young professionals in the field of city research, and urban and rural planning and governance. It is expected that these series of forums can further inspire scholars’ innovative thinking, and advance new urbanization, as well as urban governance modernization in China.