PEAK Urban

The eleventh goal of the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals – “Makes cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable” – represents the first time ever that cities have been formally identified as integral in the development debate. Continuing urbanisation confronts new and intensified challenges around environmental and social sustainability. Yet optimal solutions remain unclear, especially in cities where the pace of change is greatest, resources are most limited, governance structures are complex, and formal knowledge is sometimes in short supply. In the coming years, finding solutions to these challenges – particularly in the Global South – will disproportionately determine sustainable development outcomes worldwide.

The PEAK Urban programme aims to aid decision-making on urban futures by:

  • Generating new research grounded in the logic of urban complexity;
  • Fostering the next generation of leaders that draw on different perspectives and backgrounds to address the greatest urban challenges of the 21st century;
  • Growing the capacity of cities to understand and plan their own futures;

In PEAK Urban, cities are recognised as complex, evolving systems that are characterised by their propensity for innovation and change. Big data and mathematical models will be combined with insights from the social sciences and humanities to analyse three key arenas of metropolitan intervention: city morphologies (built forms and infrastructures), and resilience; city flux (mobility and dynamics), and technological change; as well as health and wellbeing.

ACC, is one of five partners and hosts five research projects under the PEAK Urban umbrella: