When Professor Xuemei Bai says Canberra is “an exciting city to be in,” you should believe her. She understands what makes a city tick.

Professor Bai, from the Fenner School of Environment and Society, is one of the world’s leading researchers on urbanisation and urban system sustainability

“One of my research areas is to look at innovative practices in cities to see why and how these bright spots of innovation have come about, and what sort of mechanism we can use to scale them up to meet the challenges of urbanisation,” she explains.

“And Canberra is doing some good, innovative things. As a city it’s quite advanced in adopting sustainability principles, which is impressive.”

While naturally taking a personal interest in Canberra, Professor Bai’s research focus is in Asia where, she says, “the scale and pace of urbanisation is simply unprecedented, and the challenges and opportunities it brings about are huge.”

The attention of Professor Bai can change the fortunes of a city. When she studied Rizhao, a Chinese city where solar water heating accounted for 99 percent of their central city district, the city found itself in the international spotlight. 

“It was very interesting to look at how they achieved success in Rizhao, because if you look at their economic situation, there was nothing particularly special.

“It came down to innovative policy measures, strong vision, and leadership.

“A short article containing our findings was published in more than 140 countries, and because of that coverage the city was awarded the first World Clean Energy Award and the central Chinese Government started paying attention to their policies.

“That felt great, to see our research have a cascading effect.”

In addition to research and supervising PhD students, Professor Bai teaches undergrad and Master students at the Fenner School, showcasing her own research and experience as case studies.

“This School is a unique and wonderful place in terms of exposing students to broad, and cutting-edge thinking in local and global environment and sustainability sciences.

“I absolutely feel at home here. We have a culture of adopting an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to tackling major issues in society.”

Discover everything from concrete jungles to forest cities with a postgraduate degree in environment and sustainability from ANU.