The emergence of very clear centripetal forces, drawing new economic activity and denser housing into urban centres through urban renewal, is a defining characteristic of the 21st Century city, both in Australia and elsewhere. The densification of our major cities is the major challenge facing contemporary urban policy makers. This process is leading to significant changes in terms of access to opportunities, wellbeing and the creation of wealth.  At the same time, these and other mounting pressures challenge the established approaches to managing and organising our cities. City Futures will focus on the major contemporary redefinition of the city, the forces that are driving these changes, the policies to manage it and the outcome it is generating.

While maintaining our commitment to independent applied public interest research, a critical component of the philosophy of the Centre, we will develop the new research City Agendas with partners who are aligned to our core focus and principles in order to bring to bear a much greater range of ideas and capacity to these complex and intertwined problems of urban change and growth.

In order to deliver our research, the research team is organised into five main programmatic areas, each headed by a senior team leader: Compact Cities, Healthy Built Environments, Housing, Sustainable Mobiliyt, Urban Analytics and Urban Planning.

Our commitment to generating the next generation of city researchers is underpinned by our PhD , MPhil , Masters and Honours thesis students. In addition, City Futures contributes to teaching future city professionals through our input to the Faculty’s suite of high level Masters programs which are informed by the research expertise of our staff.