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We are living through a period in which urban living has, for the first time in human history, supplanted rural life. This is a momentous shift. However, cities, for all their vibrancy and liveliness, face a growing challenge of providing secure and sustainable places to live.

The RMIT Global Cities Research Institute directly addresses this challenge through engaged research programs with significant on-the-ground impact. We emphasize questions of sustainability, resilience, security and adaptation in the face of processes of globalization and global climate change.

The Institute was inaugurated in 2006 to bring together research leaders at RMIT University, Australia, working on understanding the complexity of globalizing urban settings from provincial centres to mega-cities. The research is highly collaborative, linking with institutions and people around the world in long-term partnerships.

The Institute focuses on a number of carefully-chosen cities and their hinterlands in the Asia-Pacific region. The Institute engages in cutting-edge and applied research that has real-world consequences for communities, governments and organizations.

There are three groups associated with the Global Cities Research Institute: Global Sustainability; Nautilus@RMIT and the Global Compact Cities Programme.

The Global Cities Institute Annual Review 2009 (.pdf 4.9mb) provides an overview of the Institute's six research themes and programs, research projects, publications and grants, forums, postgraduate students and the Institute's global and national partnerships.

If you would like a hard copy of the annual review email us with your postal details.