Recently, the proposal of Beijing Municipal Key Laboratory on City Cluster System Evolution and Sustainable Development submitted by the Megacity Economic and Social Development Research Center of CUEB was approved by Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission. It is CUEB’s first key laboratory at Beijing municipal level, and first cross-disciplinary lab at provincial or ministry level that covers social and natural sciences, which underpins the university’s study on city and region sciences and strengthens its decision-making muscle as a think-tank.

In recent years, keeping its pulse on the rise of experimental simulation in social studies and the integration of social and natural sciences, CUEB has integrated internal and external research capacity in economics, management science and engineering, geography and urban & rural planning management, and in collaboration with THUPDi, it gets the green light for the only provincial and ministerial key laboratory featuring city cluster studies in China.

The laboratory aims at building itself into a think-tank lab that is rooted in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and fuels the sustainable development of cities and city clusters with simulation strength and decision-making support. Its research priorities include decision-making simulation on the coordinated spatial planning of city clusters, decision-making simulation on city cluster industrial monitoring and environment & resources optimization regulation，operation mechanism of cities as a complex system and emergency management and city sub-health diagnosis and sustainable remediation.