*Celebrating Spatial Planning at TU Delft: 2008-2019. Edited by Stead, Bracken, Rooij & Rocco

44 Spatial Planning & Strategy
The Urban Systems and
Environment (USE) Joint
Research Centre
QU LEI AND GREGORY BRACKEN
Fig. 22: USE’s team meeting in Delft. Photo provided by Qu Lei.
A
university-level joint research
centre on Urban Systems and
Environment (USE) between
TU Delft and South China University
of Technology (SCUT) was set up
in 2013, and SPS has played a leading
role in its development. Bringing
together Dutch and Chinese
researchers, as well as partners
in government and private institutions,
USE conducts high-level
research and provides advanced
training on urban systems with the
aim of providing practical contributions
to the challenges facing
city planning in high urbanization
contexts such as Northwest Europe
and the Pearl River Delta (PRD) because
the challenges facing in China
are also relevant to Europe. The
centre has already set up a double
PhD degree programme, and there
are a number of ongoing joint-research
projects as well as staff
exchanges. With its strong reputation
for international collaborative
and multidisciplinary research
and the ability to attract top talent
and ‘blue-chip’ research funding,
USE’s aim is to be a central player
in EU-China cooperation on sustainable
urbanization. Already,
governments and other users are
looking to and value USE’s research
and advice, particularly in the Pearl
River Delta. The centre’s long-term
objective is to create a deep and
self-sustaining collaboration between
TU Delft and SCUT in sustainable
urban development.