Research Themes

Research Themes

The Centre reviews its research concentrations on a regular basis to reflect its staff profile, and the requirements of its competitive grants and commissioned projects.

Currently the Urban Research Centre has two concentrated research themes:

• Productive and diverse urban economies
• Affordable and sustainable housing  

Productive and diverse urban economies

The modern city has always been the core place for productive economic activity. This arises from a city’s large concentration of workers, consumers, firms and government agencies, and the availability of suitable land, infrastructure and services. The productive and diverse urban economies research theme has three purposes. First, it pursues an understanding of the way successful productive activity is organised in a city’s different economic sub-regions and sectors. Second, it seeks to explain urban economies through innovative and analytical research techniques and with novel, powerful representations of a city’s economic operations and connections. Third, the theme seeks to devise new pathways to generate sustainable and just economic activity characterised by diversity and resilience with fair levels of participation across a city’s sub-regions and socio-cultural groupings.

Directions

The productive and diverse urban economies theme is undertaking projects in these areas:

• Sustainable urban infrastructure in large cities 
• The geography of entrepreneurship and employment in global Sydney 
• Food economies and culinary knowledges in large cities.

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Affordable and sustainable housing

The Centre’s work on affordable and sustainable housing has earned a national reputation in a short time period. The Centre will now build its capacity in housing affordability research alongside a deeper engagement with the interactions between housing and health. This extension will strengthen research ties with the Schools of Biomedical and Health Sciences, and Medicine; as well as strengthen the MUMP teaching program.

Directions

The affordable and sustainable housing theme is currently pursuing these directions:

• Diverse housing tenures
• Housing, urban development and health
• The impacts of planning regulation on housing affordability.

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