NEWS

On Thursday April 3rd 2014, the former Mayor of Bath City Mr. Andrew Furse and City Council member Mr. Paul Crossley visited APU to deliver a lecture entitled “Bath’s Strengths” for APU students, members of staff and faculty.

Bath city is located 176 km west of London and is the only hot spring region in the U.K. Bath has had a sister-city agreement with Beppu city, also famous for hot springs, since October 1994. In the lecture, Mr. Furse, a politician with a chartered electrical engineering background, introduced the status quo of Bath city, from maintaining the development of traditional tourism with its world-famous hot springs to the most recent efforts in boosting local economy by promoting innovation and technology enterprises.

In the question and answer session after the lecture, a wide range of topics were lively discussed, such as how to keep U.K. cities competitive amongst the rapid growth of the Asia Pacific region, local implementation of renewable energy technologies, and references for balancing traditional tourism with innovative industries.