RMIT’s Global Cities’ research agenda has two major themes:

• Globalization

• Global climate change

These themes are understood in terms of four key concepts:

Security

Security is treated as a general rather than just military condition. Our key focus here involves examining the local-global context of a range of cities and communities in the Asia-Pacific region. These settings range from communities dealing with the aftermath of widespread violence or natural disasters to those polities-communities in countries such as Australia where, despite the absence of the immediate pressures of violence or natural disasters, cities are facing new kinds of insecurity. This is expressed in cultural, political, economic, environmental and technical terms. Here one of our key concerns is those group and communities most vulnerable in the face of insecurity and risk.

Resilience

Our aim here is to understand the technical and social capacities of cities and communities to respond actively to and practically address processes of globalization and the emerging impacts of climate change. In the face of social and environmental change, cities are experiencing increasing pressures. Existing and emerging patterns of resilience are important to the ongoing viability of communities and their infrastructures. Such patterns of resilience give communities a basis for considering different ways of ameliorating or adapting to emerging conditions such as climate change before they reach crisis proportions.

Sustainability

As the other side of the concern about the sources of insecurity and risk, our work involves developing the interpretative, practical and technical bases for more adequately understanding how the conditions of positive human security and wellbeing might best be sustained or revitalized under different circumstances. By bringing together the interpretative social sciences and the natural and engineering sciences, the Institute attempts to offer a comprehensive understanding of how to deal with real-world problems. In other words, we want to develop practical, socially-engaged, and ethicallyconsidered responses to the question, ‘What is to be done?’

Adaptation

Adaptation is the process by which responses to questions of sustainability are embedded in the practices of communities, organizations and governments. This involves developing and implementing strategies to ameliorate, moderate and cope with the consequences of global insecurities, including climate change and social pressure. Adaptation is one possible approach to enhancing resilience. In most cases, however, adequate research has not been done to guide such processes of adaptation. Conducting such research is central to the Institute, as is linking the research to applied outcomes.