For our final Sydney event, join curator at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Con Gerakaris, and the University of Sydney’s Kate Goodwin for an illuminating walk through the heart of Chinatown and Haymarket. We’ll explore the galleries, public artworks, redeveloped streetscapes and historic buildings, informed by first-hand experience, oral histories and neighbourhood stories. As we wander through this rich and layered landscape, Con and Kate will share their perspectives on the historical roots, current realities, and future trajectories of Chinatown and similar cultural precincts.

From social media campaigns to street protests and occupy movements, activists are fighting for housing and urban justice across the world. Following a special Australian premier screening of the film ‘Mother City’, this panel of activists and scholars from Australia and South Africa discuss how local struggles – often shared through music, art, film, and media – build global solidarity. 

This panel discussion follows the special Australian premiere screening of Mother City.

Join us for this special Australian premier screening of the film, which will be followed by a panel discussion featuring activists and scholars from Australia and South Africa, including the film’s Nkosikhona Swaartbooi, Nkosikhona Swaartbooi, campaigner for justice and equalit

As daily witnesses to global crises, what is the role of urbanists and architects in responding to the catastrophic destruction playing out in cities and neighbourhoods across the world? This panel features experts across humanitarian architecture, heritage, and housing policy who share their efforts in supporting communities at the frontline of crises.

Join us for this special exhibition of shortlisted entries to the Festival of Urbanism Translocal Student Storytelling Visual Competition awards 2026, and award announcements. The event will include a reception to celebrate the exhibition, shortlisted entrants, and awardees. Hosted in collaboration with the NSW Planning Institute of Australia’s Emerging Planners.

How do planners and designers consider cultural diversity when planning for new and renewing precincts? From respecting Country and traditional ownership to the contemporary multi-culturalism enriching Australia’s contemporary cities and regions, our expert panel shares leading design and planning practice.

This walking tour offers an immersive exploration of how Harris Park’s “Little India” precinct is being shaped through targeted planning and public investment which celebrate cultural identity. Led by a small group of practitioners and contributors with direct experience in urban design, planning, and local place-making within the Parramatta/Harris Park context, the ‘walk-shop’ will demonstrate how governance and planning frameworks can actively support migrant-ledplace-making while balancing tourism, authenticity, and local needs.

The Global Biodiversity Framework challenges us to learn from and care for local natural systems while recognising the translocal flows between ecosystems. This session shines a light on scientific and community based efforts to restore and ‘rewild’ urban ecosystems which have been denuded by invasive flora and fauna since Colonisation.

This year’s annual housing debate challenges our experts and audience to consider whether migration could solve Australia’s contemporary housing crisis. We’ll be inviting you to open your minds for this debate where the winning team is decided by the strength of their persuasion in this Intelligence Squared inspired event.

Accommodating population growth and change from migration as well as natural increases, is central to urban and regional planning. However, recent concerns about housing affordability and infrastructure gaps threaten the social license for migration which is fast becoming a political football. This panel discusses how and why planning for housing and infrastructure must address the local experiences, impacts and opportunities presented by global migration.

Has our planning for the built environment adjusted since the lessons of the global Pandemic? Unfortunately, questions about how our built environment influences public health measures during outbreaks and pandemics remain largely unanswered. This panel explores how architects and public health professionals can work together to address political and ethical challenges associated with built environments during outbreaks and pandemics.  Considerations range from the design and performance of residential and public buildings through to transport, open space/playgrounds, and infrastructure. 

From the borderlands of Ireland and Northern Ireland to sacred groves in Brazil and Nigeria, this special Denis Winston Memorial Lecture delivered by Professor Gareth Doherty, explores diverse engagements with urban landscapes. With particular attention to Afro-Brazilian terreiros as sites where trance and transcendence, gender and materiality, and ritual and everyday life converge, the lecture introduces the concept of “trancescapes” and considers how these spaces can enrich our understanding of landscape and urbanism. Following the lecture, an expert panel reflects on the critical possibilities for socially engaged landscape design, research, and urban planning in Sydney.  

Sydney has emerged as a hot spot in the global data centre boom, with dozens of massive hyperscale data centres currently in construction and development. What’s driving this growth, and how is it reshaping our city? Rapid data centre growth has been met with growing community concern, mobilisation, and even calls for moratoriums on new construction. This discussion unpacks the economic, environmental, political and spatial implications of data centre growth, debates the principles that should underpin their regulation.

This special guided tour of the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s collection with Director of Exhibitions and Collections Dr Paul Donnelly highlights ancient artefacts from the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Middle East. Spanning from the pre-Neolithic to the late medieval period, these artefacts speak to the surprising extent and depth of connectivity in the ancient world. The circulation of goods, resources, and people enabled the sharing of technologies, script, and ideas so essential to the development of complex society.

This session explores how mobility is learned, enabled and constrained across species, cultures and environments. Through the migration of bar tailed godwits, declining independent mobility among Australian children, and culturally shaped experiences of migration and parenting, it shows that movement is more than travelling from one place to another. It is a social and environmental practice shaped by ecology, urban design, risk, care and aspiration.

Cities are complex and contradictory places. Cultural theorist and sociologist Nikos Papastergiadis explores the gap between how cities are officially planned and envisaged and how they're actually experienced and imagined by diverse cultures, examining how arts precincts form, and the elusiveness of truly convivial places. Following this special presentation, our panellists discuss how the translocal unsettles perspectives, making connections between the here and there, and enabling a way to imagine the city differently.

This event highlights Australian First Nations led design and innovation on the global stage. From the extraordinary Home pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architectural Biennale to the significant work of Country centred designers at Western Sydney Aerotropolis, we hear from leading First Nations practitioners and scholars.

Join expert urbanist Diana Griffiths, UNSW Professor of Planning Susan Thompson, and USYD urbanist Dr Vera Xia to experience Cabramatta in Sydney’s west. We will explore the rich culinary landscape, its heritage and history and the broader neighbourhood context.