Future Cities Making : Mission-oriented Research for Urban Sustainability Transitions in Australia

This open access book describes the complex dynamics that coevolve in cities and from cities, to inform agendas for urban research and urban policy with a view to future city missions. It provides a suite of research-informed chapters on urban pathways that are early signals and visions for how future cities can be shaped and transformed as well as chapters from policy, industry and intermediary organization actors that relate and respond to these pathways from a mainstreaming and implementation perspective. This edited collection intends to trigger and capture an ambitious transformative agenda amongst researchers and practitioners who have as their mission to shape urban futures. 

While there is proliferating literature on cities, urbanism and urban governance, this book offers a unique selling point – implying a research positioning point – to the field of sustainability transitions by intersecting research on urban sustainability transitions and missions-oriented research. The focus on the nexus of game-changers, pathways and innovations sets the book firmly in the leading edge of urban transitions research. The book engages with a breadth of disciplines including sustainability science, urban planning, urban design, mobility, energy, climate change science, urban ecology, urban sociology, architecture, data science, sustainability transitions studies, policy analysis and policy studies, as well as environmental governance. As an output, it aims to engage with and inspire future research and teaching/education in the fields of architecture and urban planning, urban design, environmental governance, sustainability science, innovation studies and urban sociology. 

Niki Frantzeskaki 

Chair Professor Urban, and Metropolitan Planning and Governance, Utrecht University, The Netherlands and Research Professor, Centre for Urban Transition, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia 

Niki Frantzeskaki is a Chair Professor of Regional and Metropolitan Governance and Planning, Section Spatial Planning, Geosciences Faculty, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her expertise is in urban transitions and transformations, their governance and planning, with a focus on achieving climate change adaptation and mitigation, sustainability, and resilience. Her research also focuses on the governance and planning of nature-based solutions for contributing to climate change resilience and more just urban futures. She has a rich international research experience in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States of America. She has been a Highly Cited Researcher awardee from Clarivate Analytics in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 putting her in the top 1% of researchers globally in the cross-field of social sciences and ecology. 

Magnus Moglia 

Associate Professor, Centre for Urban Transition, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia 

Magnus Moglia has been an Associate Professor of Urban Sustainability at the Centre for Urban Transitions at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia since 2020. Before that he spent 19 years at the CSIRO, Australia’s federal science agency. His expertise is on applied research and science on embedding sustainability solutions into society, addressing diverse topics like water management, climate adaptation, freight, transport, and mobility decarbonization, workforce transition, sustainable agriculture, circular economy, nature-based solutions, working-from-home practices, and infrastructure resilience. He has extensive international experience on adapting cities to climate change, across Australia, Vietnam, and the Pacific Island Countries. He is the author of many journal articles (70+), book chapters, industry reports, and conference articles. He is the current chair of the Regen Melbourne Research Council, and on the Editorial Board for the journals Urban Transformations, and Sustainability, as well as Associate Editor for Current Research in Environmental Sustainability.  

Peter Newton 

Emeritus Professor, Centre for Urban Transition, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia 

Peter Newton is an Emeritus Professor in the Centre for Urban Transitions (CUT) at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. From 2007-2021 he held the position as Research Professor in Sustainable Urbanism at CUT, following fifteen years as Chief Research Scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). In 2022 he was Interim Director of the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) at the University of Melbourne. He has had a distinguished career in built environment research and was elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 2014. His principal fields of research have focused on the technology of planning, sustainability science and urban settlement transitions. He has published over 25 books, including: Greening the Greyfields – New Models for Regenerating the Middle Suburbs of Low-Density Cities (2022); Migration and Urban Transitions in Australia (2022); and Decarbonising the Built Environment (2019). 

Deo Karan Prasad 

Scientia Professor, The University of New South Wales, UNSW Sydney, Australia  

Deo Prasad is a Scientia Professor of sustainable built environments at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia.  His expertise covers sustainable, low carbon, smart, resilient and regenerative buildings and cities and he has published 300+ refereed publications. He currently is the CEO of the NSW Decarbonisation Innovation Hub and previously was CEO of the CRC for Low Carbon Living. Deo has received acknowledgement of his contributions from all levels of government in Australia including an Order of Australia, a Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects, NSW Government’s Green Globe Award and the Global Impact Award as well as the National Leadership in Sustainability Prize from the Australian Institute of Architects.   His current work is leading the commercialisation of proof-of-concept technologies and systems by creating an industry-government, research collaborative community at scale. 

Melissa Pineda Pinto  

Postdoctoral Fellow, Melbourne Centre for Cities, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. Adjunct Fellow, Centre for Urban Transition, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. 

Melissa Pineda-Pinto is a McKenzie postdoctoral research fellow at the Melbourne Centre for Cities, at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Here she is leading a project exploring urban novel ecosystems and multispecies justice through community engagement in the cities of Melbourne, Australia and San José, Costa Rica. Prior to this she worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the project NovelEco, at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, which examines wild ecosystems in cities through forecasting methodologies and policy analysis. Melissa completed her PhD at Swinburne University of Technology exploring nature-based solutions through an ecological justice lens. She has a Master of Environment from the University of Melbourne. Her academic experience and interests cut across social research methods, inter-transdisciplinary collaboration, and systems thinking in the context of urban ecosystems, multispecies justice, and environmental ethics.  Her research examines urban nature through diverse justice lenses for achieving sustainable futures.