Arts, Design & Architecture City Futures Research Centre

City Futures Research Centre

Our work advances the understanding of cities focusing on people, places, policies and technologies

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2025-05-28-Autumn-UNSW-Campus-general

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Students using technology in the City Futures Lab at the School of Built Environment
About us

Our team includes academic leaders, professional staff, and members of our external advisory committee who work together to support our mission and goals.

Aerial view of rows of typical homes built during the 2010s in outer suburban Sydney, Australia.
20th Anniversary

Celebrating 20 years of excellence and impact at City Futures Research Centre (2005–2025) through our ‘20 Years 20 Impact Stories’ series. 

Students using technology in the City Futures Lab at the School of Built Environment
Research

We conduct research that addresses key challenges in urban environments, drawing on diverse disciplines and methodologies.

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Events

Keep informed with the latest developments, announcements, and scholarly activities within our network.

The Homelessness Monitor: England 2023
CityBlog

News and research in housing and urban policy, from Australia's leading urban policy research centre.

Cycling Movement
CityViz

CityViz is a data visualisation and analytics initiative by City Futures, capitalising on our unique access to urban big data for Sydney.

birdseye view of suburban area
CityDash

Our dashboards provide clear and accessible insights into key areas of city planning and extreme weather.

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CityData

Search for Geospatial datasets published by users, organisations and public sources.

Anita B. Lawrence Centre
Contact us

Get in touch with the City Futures team.

Research

All Projects

Our projects explore the evolving dynamics of urban life, tackling issues from housing and transport to sustainability and governance.

Compact Cities

Compact Cities emphasises city planning policy by concentrating development within a limited area.

Healthy Built Environments

Healthy Built Environments focuses on creating healthy built environments that support people to live healthier everyday lives.

Housing

Housing encompasses a wide spectrum of issues ranging from social housing management and estate renewal to housing affordability, financing and development.

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Urban Analytics

Urban Analytics encompasses smart cities, big data, open data, geo-design, modelling and simulation, visualisation and virtual reality offer exciting new data-driven methods, tools and technologies to support city shapers in designing and planning our future cities.

Urban Planning

Urban Planning is focused on metropolitan planning, urban renewal, socio‐spatial polarisation, housing markets, the compact city, and urban policy and practice.

Sustainable Mobility

Sustainable Mobility examines how we move around our cities and the impact this has on environments, economics, health, and wellbeing.