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.

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.

Cities are complex and contradictory places. A city’s artistic culture rarely aligns with the planning systems, laws and institutions that shape how they're built. This tension between imaginary space and the built environment is not new, it is an embedded feature and a driving force in urban life. 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. He will examine how arts precincts form, and the elusiveness of places that offer true conviviality. A panel of respondents explore how we find inspiration in our city, and how we design spaces that welcome all. Together they discuss how the translocal unsettles perspectives, blurring what is close at hand with the far apart, making connections between the here and there, and enabling a way to imagine the city differently.

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.

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 will be a dynamic discussion to unpack the economic, environmental, political and spatial implications of data centre growth, and to discuss and debate the principles that should underpin their regulation. Speakers will explore diverse perspectives and experiences, and discuss policies that could ensure that data centre developments do not compromise other urgent priorities including social amenity, emissions reduction and sustainable growth.

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. 

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.

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.

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 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. With $3.5M in Australian Government funding and ongoing City of Parramatta initiatives, the precinct represents a live case study in culturally-led urban regeneration. 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.

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.

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.

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. 

Mother City (dir. Miki Redelinghuys & Pearlie Joubert, 2024) is an award winning documentary about the inequalities of housing and continuing spatial apartheid that exists in urban and housing planning in Cape Town and the campaign run by activists from local townships and the community occupying a public hospital in the city.