On Sunday, a group of Danish and Chinese students will begin a summer collaboration on sustainable cities.
Four students from the University of Peking, along with their professor and a research assistant, will arrive in Copenhagen to kick off a new project entitled 'Beijing Copenhagen Urban Challenge'. There, they will join a team of four Danish students for two weeks of studies that will focus on entrepreneurship, public-private partnerships and cultural collaborations and barriers. After two weeks in Copenhagen, both groups of students will fly to Beijing to continue their summer studies in the Chinese capital.
The Danish-Chinese collaboration was dreamed up by the Copenhagen Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab (CIEL), which represents Copenhagen Business School, the Technical Institute of Denmark (DTU) and the University of Copenhagen. The two-week programmes in Copenhagen and Beijing serve as a pilot project for CIEL's course line in green innovation.
The Beijing Copenhagen Urban Challenge aims to explore sustainability issues that apply to both a relatively small city like Copenhagen, with its metro population just shy of two million, and the much larger Beijing and its nearly 12 million inhabitants.
According to Niels Kornum, a CBS professor involved with the project, the collaboration with the University of Peking will help position Denmark as a global leader in sustainability and innovation.
"Networks and relationships have increasing importance in a globalised world," Niels Kornum, a CBS professor involved with the project, said. "The cultural and social exchanges from this project will strengthen the formal and informal networks that are central for the long-term role that Denmark plays in, and for, the world."
