About us | Future of the City C

Context

In all cities across the world, the city centre needs to continue to play a fundamental and dynamic role in making the urban space a vibrant and liveable place. It is the focus of exchange, not only of goods and services but also information and ideas, a place where work interacts with leisure and play, and where people’s lives intersect. It is the beating heart of the city.

However, changing patterns of commerce, retailing and living, and the need to contribute to responses to climate change are challenging its future character, putting the downtown under immense and sustained pressures. The Future of the City Centre Network seeks to help ensure that city centres can respond positively to these grand challenges.

Purpose

The Future City Centre Network is an international membership group that shares a desire to help make the downtowns more sustainable, more liveable and more attractive places. We do this by:

promoting innovative ways that can help make city centres more sustainable, sharing examples of how new ways of thinking about the city centre can drive forward agendas that support net zero targets and support climate action
facilitating collaboration and partnerships, helping to build relationships through the network
helping set future agenda through projects and research, enabling members to join research projects and to encourage collaboration between members
publicising good practice and encouraging shared learning, with this website providing insights to ways in which members and partners are transforming urban cores.

Aim

Our aim is to help generate manifestos that ensure city centres as they change and adapt are effective in improving the quality of life and wellbeing of citizens, and contribute to cities being more resilient by providing opportunities to engage commercial, civic leaders, practitioners and academics to advance thinking and planning city centres for the future.

We believe there is a need for more shared understanding of how to make city centres more sustainable and resilient, and new forms of collaboration to help ensure that they remain the beating heart of the city as a whole. This needs to be informed by innovative research, adoption of new technology and knowledge, and the sharing of good practice.

Membership

Membership is free and open to anyone who wishes to join in helping to make a difference in our cities. The Network is coordinated by Professor Bob Giddings, Northumbria University, UK to whom membership inquiries can be made - use the link below.

Members are encouraged to share their work and thoughts with the network, and have opportunities to connect with others as part of the Network.

Our story

This international initiative started in 2018 as a 2 year research project funded by the UKRI Arts & Humanities Research Council. It brought together academics, civic and commercial leaders, as well as citizens into conversation about the future shape and role of the city centre. Symposia were held in four cities across four continents – in the UK, Australia, South Africa and Brazil - to share experiences on how the challenges and opportunities faced by city centres are being addressed in practice and importantly to outline a vision of the future of the city centre. This research helped set the future research agenda for the FCCN, identifying key themes that are shaping the future role of the city centre in the middle of the 21st century.

Since then, our research has expanded and we are now engaged with more cities and citizens globally to capture innovative ways in which the city centre is being made more sustainable and resilient, and collaborate with city leaders to imagine and deliver vibrant downtowns.

The FCCN provides a key platform and forum for open debate and discussion about how this key urban space can be sustainable and contribute to societal and environmental grand challenges. It seeks to inform urban policy making and practice in designing city centres to be inclusive and meeting local needs whilst also being at the heart of regional economies.

We welcome anyone who shares our interest and passion to help keep the city centre relevant - academics, practitioners, NGOs, community organisations, and citizens - to join with us as part of the FCCN. Use the form below to get in touch and help shape future city centres.

The Future of the City Centre Network is a collaboration between