Cities are the points at which our effect on atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric systems is most pronounced, and where solutions to many of the resultant problems will need to be put into action.

For too long the prominence of Australian cities in global liveability rankings has obscured issues, many typical of the Anthropocene, which are not being comprehensively addressed in planning. Specifically Australia’s cities are bedevilled by biodiversity loss, soaring greenhouse gas emissions, water shortages, ‘bush’ fires and a stubborn reliance on non-renewable energy sources. Nonetheless, Australian society is one of city-dwellers, and a great number of the benefits of the Australian way of life are provided to us by our cities. As such this panel argues it is time for a critical appraisal of where Australian cities are at, and where they are heading. We ask ‘what is the great ‘Australian Dream’ of the 21^st century?

Since the turn of the century landscape urbanism has claimed greater structural influence for the discipline of landscape architecture in city making, and sought to position ‘landscape’ as a template for urbanism. It is timely to question whether this structural influence has been achieved for Australian landscape architecture practices, and if not, why not?

To engage with these issues this forum convenes a group of academics and practitioners, landscape architects and non-landscape architects. Speakers will provide a broad overview of a nation of cities bracing for the impacts of climate change, critique the existing crop of capital city planning frameworks which spearhead the nation’s forward planning, and reflect on the political, spatial, infrastructural and ecological systems required to effectively wrestle with the crises of the Anthropocene and speculate on how our cities can be transformed into being the ‘lifeboats’ for humanity which they will rapidly need to become.