Climate change is currently identified as one of the most challenging global issues, which makes low-carbon development an increasingly popular topic that needs serious consideration. Therefore, the way cities are planned, managed, and use energy will play a vital role in mitigating climate change and its impact on the environment. Some simple city facilities such as pedestrian walkways, safe bikeways, and different modes of transportations, as well as sustainable policies and action programs, could reduce automobile dependency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission in many cities. This project will explore such sufficient and practical rules and policies to redesign neighborhoods to create more sustainable, livable, and low-carbon cities, which will be accessible and attractive for all groups of people. This study reviews, compares, and analyzes different sustainable urbanism principles under three pillars of the sustainable development concept, including environmental, economical, and social. It also analyzes similar successful projects in Europe to find the appropriate and practical rules that are compatible with community requirements. The results show that all the sustainable principles should work together to create a sustainable community with reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it is everyone’s responsibility to care about the future. It is necessary for urban planners, architects, and any related divisions of government to follow the proper rules to make cities a better place to live and also to increase residents’ awareness of both climate change issues and practical solutions. Urban planners are responsible for inviting people to be involved in making decisions and sharing their ideas to enrich communication, with the purpose of making a better city to live in.

This thesis aims to investigate how the City of Lund, and Lund University will provide accommodation for researchers associated with the construction of the research facilities ESS and MAX IV. Furthermore, this paper will study what synergies that exist between housing for researchers, the City of Lund, and its university to attract international researchers.  There is a shortage of housing for students and researchers, especially in municipalities with higher education institutions. To solve this, the Swedish government issued a regulation that enabled universities to offer accommodation to further groups of researchers to strengthen Sweden as a research nation. With the ESS and MAX IV as catalysts for growth, the municipality of Lund will function as an important research hub on an international level. The research conducted a study of strategic documents, such as the City of Lund’s comprehensive plans and in-depth comprehensive plan. As well as a qualitative method that implemented interviews, whereby some of the questions were based on the analyzes of the document study. The interviews were constructed from three groups and will be the perspectives this thesis will discuss its results and analysis by.  The results showed the need for strategic documents to include socio-cultural values and place-based innovations to attract knowledge-intense professionals and further highlight the need for cooperation between Lund municipality and Lund University to maintain its guest researchers.