FLUX DYNAMICS INITIATIVE

Complexity · Relationships · Regeneration

An international research initiative University of the Sunshine Coast · School of Law and Society · Urban Design & Town Planning Program

Regions, cities and neighbourhoods are more than systems to optimise. They are living assemblages of objects in relationships. Against a tide of techno-scientific disequilibrium, they are the places where we must restore the broken connection between our inner lives and the living biosphere.

Flux Dynamics Initiative positions the synthesis of Flux Cities and systems thinking as the next evolution of urban theory and spatial practice.

For researchers, planners, designers and institutions rethinking how habitat is studied, taught and made.

Read the manifesto Join the research network Explore the research atlas ↓ Scholarship Spheres ↓

Abstract artwork evoking Flux Cities as an ambiguous, shifting milieu of matter

Spatial becoming

18research locations

11countries, 6 continents

24selected publications

Published with Palgrave Macmillan · Springer · Routledge · CRC Press Grounded in Flux Cities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) ↗

Our research approach is a paradigm shift in how planning and design for habitat itself is understood. It stands alongside the major intellectual currents redefining how the built and living world are studied in the twenty-first century, and sets a new international benchmark for what rigorous, ethically accountable habitat-related research looks and feels like.

01 · The challenge

Why existing models are no longer enough

For decades, complexity science has helped planners understand emergence, feedback, resilience and adaptation. Flux Dynamics Initiative extends these foundations, insisting that complexity is not only computed but lived — asking what it means for how we know, value and act, not setting it aside.

Complex systems research has transformed our understanding of cities as adaptive, dynamic and non-linear. Rather than treating cities only as adaptive systems, Flux Cities understands them as living relational ecologies, in which people, places, institutions, technologies, histories and more-than-human life continually co-produce one another.

Complex systems science remains one of the most important intellectual developments of the last fifty years. Flux Dynamics Initiative's contribution is not to replace it, but to extend it — integrating relational ontology, embodied experience and planning ethics into how that complexity is understood and acted upon, while honouring Indigenous knowledge systems in their own sovereignty and sacredness, as inspirational best practice for relearning how to live well within planetary boundaries.

Much of what limits existing models relates to a lack of collective imagination. Flux Dynamics Initiative treats speculative imagination as a core pillar: the capacity to play seriously with futures that have no precedent, and to take invisible possibilities as seriously as measurable ones.

Our research approach is more than a systems model. It is a way of working within uncertainty that holds together:

measurable interactions
lived experience
moral values
more-than-human relationships
collective imagination

In practice, this means integrating complexity science, ecological awareness on the underlying interconnectedness of existence, we can add value by research through relational tracing inquiries to how ecological, social, cultural and affective interactions shape urban transformation.

Where this shows up

Climate & ecology

Rapid, non-linear change; extreme events; ecosystem collapse; species redistribution.

Technology & AI

Automation, synthetic media, digital twins — constant disruption of governance and ethics.

Society & culture

Polarisation, migration, loss of trust, generational value shifts.

Economy & policy

Post-growth realities, circular economy, new metrics beyond GDP.

Urban systems

Decentralisation, hybrid work, post-pandemic spatial reconfiguration.

02 · The manifesto

Integrating complexity, relationality and care

Post-reductionist by design — a reclamation of scientia: a rigorous and expansive mode of knowing that integrates systems complexity with the creative, spiritual, and ethical pursuits of a world in becoming.

The natural environment rarely grows through command and control. Ecosystems - such as the mycelium flourish through living networks of reciprocity, adaptation and renewal that are often hidden from plain sight. They remind us that resilience emerges not from rigid control, but from relationships that enable life to learn, evolve and regenerate.

The Flux Dynamics Initiative explores how planning, design and governance can learn from these living principles and evolution by gaining a deep understanding of how relationships organise and sustain habitat differently.

Our work is grounded in the original meaning of the Latin word scientia: the pursuit of understanding through observation, critical inquiry, creativity, ethics and lived experience. We believe today's challenges demand this broader vision of science—one that embraces complexity while remaining rigorous, open and interdisciplinary.

Cities, neighbourhoods and regions are living ecologies shaped by continual interactions between people, institutions, cultures and the more-than-human world. By integrating complexity science, relational inquiry and regenerative spatial practice — and honouring Indigenous knowledge systems in their own sovereignty and sacredness as inspirational best practice for living well within planetary boundaries — we investigate how habitats can become more resilient, just and life-giving.

What Flux Cities offers

How do we act ethically inside complexity? What does complexity feel like when lived?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are the working questions the Initiative returns to in every commission, every workshop, every paper — the difference between modelling a system and being answerable to the people and places inside it.

Answering them takes more than co-producing meaning as part of data analysis. It treats speculative imagination and irreducible embodiment of experience as valid post-qualitative inquiries. Our willingness to play creatively with what does not yet exist on a physical plane, and to take what complexity keeps invisible as seriously as what it makes traceable.

The vocabulary of Flux Cities

Six terms from Flux Cities: Ontological Design for a Regenerative World (Mews, 2025) — click a concept to engage.

A theory proposing that a city is not a fixed, mechanical arrangement of buildings and infrastructure, but an ever-changing, relational "milieu of matter" in which meaning and agency emerge through the ongoing interaction of human, non-human, animate and inanimate elements. Rather than a stable object to be measured and managed, Flux Cities treats the city as a continuously becoming assemblage — accessible only through partial, situated glimpses of lived experience, never as a finished whole.

Chapter 3 — Flux Cities (Springer, 2025) ↗

An approach that deliberately de-centres the human as the only actor that matters in a city, recognising animals, plants, materials, and even emotions and ideas as active participants in how places are shaped and experienced.

Chapter 1 — Flux Cities (Springer, 2025) ↗

A deliberate fusion of "movement" and "moment," used to describe the practice of paying close attention to what is changing in a place at any given instant. Rather than treating a city as a static snapshot, mo(ve)ment is a way of staying with its ongoing process of becoming as it actually unfolds.

Chapter 3 — Flux Cities (Springer, 2025) ↗

A methodological metaphor describing how any single account, image or dataset about a city can only capture a partial, time-bound "shadow" of a much larger, continuously moving reality — never the whole of what is real.

Chapter 3 — Flux Cities (Springer, 2025) ↗

The underlying, often invisible layer of values, ethics and cultural meaning — care, trust, belonging, grief, and more — that shapes how physical (hard) and social (soft) infrastructure actually function in a place. Flux Cities treats this values-layer as infrastructure in its own right, not an afterthought to planning and design.

Preface, "Axiological Infra-Structure Matters" — Flux Cities (Springer, 2025) ↗

Complex urban systems thinking serves as a foundational scientific anchor for Flux Cities, which conceptualises the urban environment as a dynamic, non-linear system defined by feedback loops, adaptation, and emergence. This perspective directly informs Flux Cities' rejection of the primary form of "scientism" — the reductionist, linear models that treat cities as static, mechanistic objects. Ultimately, this synergy moves urban practice from "knowledge as description" to "knowledge as relationship". It demands that planners and designers move beyond modelling systems from the outside to becoming creative and speculative alchemists who participate in the co-creation of, and are answerable to, the human and more-than-human life-worlds inside the system.

Flux Cities (Springer, 2025) ↗

03 · Research & practice

Theoraxis: where theory becomes practice

Applied research, workshops, and advice — grounded in critical and deep thinking and embodied practices on emerging and pressing challenges.

Held to the same standard as the Initiative's scholarship, these six capabilities are what distinguish a genuinely international research initiative from a consultancy — applied work that can stand beside peer-reviewed publication, not sit apart from it.

Analysis

Relational systems analysis

Maps social, ecological, cultural, and emotional flows — not just static efficiency — to find leverage points in living systems and support adaptive decision-making.

Design

Flux-based design frameworks

Prototype policies and places that evolve with real-time change, using play, speculative imagination, and ontological design to surface the invisible, contradictions, tensions and ambiguities.

Ecology

More-than-human urbanism

Treats ecological and technological agency as co-creators of the city, not add-ons — with participatory tools for mapping multispecies and material relationships.

Governance

Post-normative ethics & governance

Facilitates value-sensitive dialogue where norms are in genuine conflict — development versus ecological limits — beyond compliance or moralising.

Evaluation

Real-time reflexive evaluation

Embeds learning loops into every project, treating unintended effects and contradictions as data, not failure.

Knowledge transfer

Regenerative design & planning for well-being

Translates the Initiative's research into workshops, training, and practice-ready guidance — building the capacity of councils, agencies, and communities to plan for the well-being of people, place, and planet.

04 · Research atlas

Knowledge in place

Places are not study sites. They are co-authors of understanding.

Every publication begins somewhere. From our shared ontological perspective, ideas are not produced in isolation, but emerge through relationships with people, communities, landscapes and cultures. Larger, brighter points hold more work. Watch the threads that already connect these places by shared theme — hover any point to see its full web light up, or search to make a signal travel through the network.

Select a place on the map to access further insights on each project, the partners involved and research outputs.

05 · The research journey

A loop approach

Holds wisdom on First Nations perspectives, Native Title and local Elder relationships, complemented by extensive experience in stakeholder engagement, program coordination, community relationships, compliance and professional mentoring.

Research interests

First Nations perspective, community engagement, systems thinking, ontological design, creative research methods, Indigenous knowledges, cultural catalyst

Projects

Effective Engagement for Equitable Outcomes for Indigenous and non-Indigenous stakeholders

Current collaborations

International network member, Flux Dynamics Initiative; First Nations, environmental and place-based initiatives across the Sunshine Coast and beyond, including the Sunshine Coast Blue Heart and Blue Carbon initiative, the Sunshine Coast Biosphere, the 2032 Sunshine Coast Legacy Plan, the Carbon_Dating ecological arts project, environmental and cultural heritage planning initiatives, and Indigenous Land and Sea Rangers; place-based storytelling work including Kabi Kabi Country and Storyplace, Point Arkwright. Also contributes to University of Queensland research and engagement relating to Indigenous rights, climate justice and carbon markets.

Kabi Kabi Cooperation ↗ story on place ↗

07 · Selected publications

Scholarship Spheres

A sample of the network's published and public-facing work.

Explore the work as a living constellation before the full list below — each sphere is a real publication, positioned and connected by the themes it actually shares with others. Work built on the same core ideas — regenerative design, more-than-human relationships, flux itself — pulls closer together and threads thicker between them, the way mycelium reinforces the paths it uses most. Click a sphere to read what it argues and see what it speaks to.

Flux

Knowledge products in reciprocal flow. Click any sphere to read the work it stands for.

Legend

Book — largest, closest to the core

Book chapter

Paper / perspective

Short-form output

Strong shared-theme link

Lighter link — pulses run both ways (reciprocity)

Themes

Speaks directly to

Read the publication ↗

Dr Gregor Mews

Urban Design & Town Planning, UniSC

Flux Cities: Ontological Design for a Regenerative World

Palgrave Macmillan, 2025 · book

View ↗

On designing exteriority from within through Flux Cities in public space

In: Lara-Hernandez, J.A., Melis, A., Boarin, P. & Besen, P. (eds), The Dusk of Design — Springer, 2025 · book chapter

View ↗

Transforming Public Space through Play

Routledge, 2022 · book

View ↗

Assoc. Prof. Nicholas Stevens

Co-lead, Flux Dynamics Initiative

Human Factors in Land Use Planning and Urban Design: Methods, Practical Guidance, and Applications

Stevens, N., Salmon, P., Walker, G. & Stanton, N. — CRC Press, 2018 · book

View ↗

Safe places for pedestrians: using cognitive work analysis to consider the relationships between the engineering and urban design of footpaths

Stevens, N. & Salmon, P. — Accident Analysis & Prevention, 74, 2015

View ↗

Special section on health, urban climate and complexity in urban design and planning

Mews, G. H., Tavares, S. & Stevens, N. — The Journal of Public Space, 8(2), 2023

View ↗

Dr J. Antonio Lara-Hernandez

Focal point lead, Oceania

Temporary Appropriation in Cities: Human Spatialisation in Public Spaces and Community Resilience

Melis, A., Lara-Hernandez, J.A. & Thompson, J. (eds) — Springer, Cham, 2020 · book

View ↗

Temporary appropriation of public space as an emergence assemblage for the future urban landscape: The case of Mexico City

Lara-Hernandez, J.A., Melis, A. & Lehmann, S. — Future Cities and Environment, 5(1), 2019

View ↗

Building urban resilience through infrastructure exaptation

Lara-Hernandez, J.A. — In: Resilient and Sustainable Cities, Elsevier, 2023 · book chapter

View ↗

Dr Marcelo Sbarra

Focal point lead, Latin America

Radical imaginaries and new places for children in cities

Mews, G., Lara-Hernandez, J.A. & Sbarra, M. — 60th ISOCARP World Planning Congress, 2024 · conference paper

View ↗

The Implementation of the Ramos Stormwater Retention Basin and Its Consequences for the Urban and Social Dynamics of Residents of the Maré Complex — A Sociotechnical Approach

Sbarra, M. — conference paper & presentation

View ↗

Media & public scholarship

Documentary & podcast features

Neighbourhood Backyard

Documentary — Australian Institute of Play · community-led play spaces & public space research

Watch ↗

The Placemakers — on placemaking, with POMO

Podcast episode with Dr Nicholas Stevens, hosted by Stephen Burton

Watch ↗

What does it mean to live in the Sunshine Coast Biosphere?

Featuring Uncle Brian Warner

Watch ↗

08 · Reciprocity & partnerships

Working with, not for

Commissioned research, knowledge transfer, training and advice — targeting individuals as well as centres, with local, regional or international partners.

Councils

Local & regional councils

Gympie, Sunshine Coast, Moreton Bay

Planning for open spaces, parks, infrastructure, and strategic regional growth.

Government

State government departments

Planning, environment, infrastructure

Climate resilience programs and adaptive public-space assessment frameworks.

Industry

Developers & industry

Housing, public realm, green and blue infrastructure, nature-based solutions

Rendered around mainstreamed conceptions but imbued with more-than-human perspectives. Our tools for adaptive, regenerative projects that build long-term value and trust, beyond prevailing anthropocentrism.

Civil society

NGOs & community groups

Conservation, heritage, culture

Co-design processes that foreground care, justice, and more-than-human perspectives.

Knowledge

Traditional Owners, First Nations & Research Institutions

More-than-human perspectives

We add value to research actors — from Traditional Owners to other research institutions — through our relational, more-than-human perspective.

Infrastructure

Technology & data partners

Sensors, mapping, monitoring

Instrumenting the region's ecological and social flows for the Urban Flux Observatory and related pilots.

Where we work from

The Sunshine Coast Biosphere Reserve is not just where the Initiative is based — it is a living case study where planetary awareness of biophysical limits meets the everyday, felt reality of trying to build, grow and belong within them. Holding that tension, rather than resolving it too quickly, is part of the work.

We acknowledge the Kabi Kabi and Jinibara peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land and waterways where we meet, research, learn, teach and play today. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging, and recognise their deep spiritual and ongoing connection to Country. We recognise that deep injustice has been committed on this contested land, and that unlearning and deep listening are needed so that we, as a society, can heal and move forward together.

A shelter of driftwood built by hand on a Sunshine Coast beach, ocean in the background

Impermanent structures, enduring place

09 · Thriving toward impact

Impact, for Flux Cities, is not measured only in citations or KPIs — though the Initiative holds itself to that standard too. It shows up in more resilient neighbourhoods, more accountable institutions, and a discipline that has fundamentally rethought what it means to plan responsibly.

Navigating complexity by cultivating coherence — a place where systems meet invisibilities, and design becomes embodied caring.

Flux Dynamics Initiative

Children and volunteers playing with a large rainbow parachute in a historic town square at dusk

Play as public life — impact made visible

10 · Latest news & initiatives

What's current

Open calls, milestones, and network updates.

A living record, updated and in mo(ve)ment as the network evolves.

Open call

Call for contributions — Research Atlas

Ongoing

Working on a place-based project touching complexity, relational ontology, or regenerative design and using our output? We're inviting passionate researchers and users to reach out and share evidence of how they have applied or worked with our research and therefore actively contribute to the growing Research Atlas — use the form below to get in touch with Dr Gregor Mews.

Milestone

Launch of the Flux Dynamics Initiative online platform

25 August 2026

The Initiative brings together interested scholars who seek to embrace an expansionist perspective and build bridges across the theory and practice divide to shape an emerging onto-epistemology research agenda related to habitat sciences.

Network update

New focal point lead — Indigenous perspectives

Uncle Brian Warner

Uncle Brian Warner, a proud and highly regarded Kabi Kabi Elder, now leads the Initiative on all Indigenous and First Nations perspectives globally.

Network update

Two new focal points, two continents

Oceania & Latin America

Dr Antonio Lara-Hernandez (Otago Polytechnic) and Dr Marcelo Sbarra (UFRJ) now lead the Initiative's regional focal points for Oceania and Latin America respectively.

Open EOI

Network members — expressions of interest

Gender diverse, international

Open international EOI for research network members (gender diverse) who have published at least one research output/creative output based on Flux Cities thinking and therefore embrace an expansionist perspective and building bridges across the theory and praxis divide to shape a transdisciplinary emerging onto-epistemology research agenda related to habitat sciences from a more-than-human perspective.

Open EOI

Co-authors — book project

"Habitat Beyond Certainty: Flux, Complexity and Urban Life"

We invite diverse scholars and thought leaders on more-than-human perspective to contribute original chapters to "Habitat Beyond Certainty: Flux, Complexity and Urban Life", examining how relational, complexity-informed and regenerative perspectives can transform contemporary understandings of planning, design and urban futures. Reach out to the co-leads to learn more.

Get in touch with us

Governments, industry, research bodies and NGOs can commission research, or propose a local, regional or international partnership. Graduate and HDR students can get involved through the Urban Design and Town Planning Program.

Connect & follow

Interested people can connect and follow our Heterarchical group on LinkedIn — join the conversation and stay close to the Initiative's network as it grows.

Who would you like to reach?

Dr Gregor Mews Co-lead — regenerative design, theory, public space, spatial justice, urban health Assoc. Prof. Nicholas Stevens Co-lead — systems methods, infrastructure, land use, resilience General enquiries Partnerships, media & everything else