Places create people and people create places. Sustainable site development and planning is therefore about the interaction between people and the physical surroundings. It requires in-depth knowledge of environmental, social, cultural, and economic conditions - and especially the challenges and opportunities that may arise across these. At the same time, it requires insight into how places and areas can be managed and regulated. This places great demands on coordination and facilitation of cooperation between many actors and citizens.

At the Danish Center for Spatial Planning, we focus on the strategic and physical planning of places and areas. This broad understanding of spatial planning means that we look at the field through many "lenses", such as politics and governance, law and regulation, sociology, technology and basic data, design, economics, etc. It gives us a great foundation for discussing changes in places from idea to reality and through a variety of tools, instruments, and plan types. We believe that it is through an increased coordination between disciplines and cross-sector collaborations that we become better at promoting sustainable local development.

The center primarily consists of researchers from the research environments PLUS (Planning for Urban Sustainability) and LAND (Land Management and Governance) at the Department of Planning at Aalborg University, see more about us below. We, moreover, have an extensive network within both research, teaching, and practice in Denmark, and internationally we are, for example, co-responsible for the PLANNORD network (planning researchers and practitioners in the Nordics) and AESOP-Nordic Planning, see PLANNORD and AESOP-Nordic Planning pages.