The Sino-U.S. Eco Urban Lab, a joint laboratory of Georgia Tech and Tongji University, is organizing the 2015 International Symposium on Eco Urban Design. The Symposium will take place in Shanghai on June 5-6, 2015. Georgia Tech faculty members Alan Balfour, John Crittenden, Catherine Ross, Ellen Dunham-Jones, Subhro Guhathakurta, and Perry Yang will participate. They hope to initiate dialogue on the future research of ecological urban systems in the context of China’s rapid urbanization and its potential global impact. Faculty of Tongji University and the professional communities of architecture, city planning, and environment in Shanghai will join the conversation.

“Cities as systems of energy, materials, water, organism and informational flows are emerging as a fundamental research area for a sustainable and resilient urban future,” said Perry Yang, the co-organizer of the Symposium and the Director of Georgia Tech’s Eco Urban Lab. “This perspective gives rise to research questions central to ecological urban design: What are the urban design strategies for cities to be more efficient in energy performance, more renewable in resource management, and more resilient in their systems behavior? What constitutes a new form of future cities that is ecologically and energy resilient to the changes needed for the post-oil urban era to come, and more importantly, how do we design for it?”  

One goal of the Symposium is to outline the research agenda for the Sino-U.S. Eco Urban Lab. The Symposium will foster a global collaborative platform to collectively develop models of sustainable and ecological urban systems urgently needed because of rapid urbanization in China and around the world. More detailed information on the Symposium, held in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP) of Tongji University, can be found at http://www.udshanghai.org.