Founded in Singapore in 2010, Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) is a leading international research platform for urbanization studies. With more than 150 researchers based in Singapore and Zurich, FCL integrates academic, professional, and cultural perspectives to address the challenges of future cities.

This publication presents FCL’s interdisciplinary research on sustainable urban development and shows how this knowledge is translated into practical outcomes that support policymakers and public institutions in advancing sustainable urban transformation.

Moving beyond conventional notions of the “city” or “metropolis,” the book examines the networked realities of urbanization, acknowledging that settlement systems encompass neighborhoods and buildings, but also hinterlands, ecosystems, resource flows, mobility networks, and cycles of production and consumption. FCL explores urbanization as a spatial and temporal process shaped by everyday rhythms and long-term challenges such as climate change, responding to the need for new research approaches and tools.