Research challenge areas
Manchester Urban Institute (MUI) addresses four key intersectional research challenges.
Our researchers use interdisciplinary and multi-scalar approaches to explore urban challenges. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, we develop solutions to real-world issues, prioritising the co-production of knowledge with communities, policymakers, and civil society stakeholders.
This collaborative approach stimulates shared ownership, bridges the gap between theory and practice, and informs policies and innovations that address urban needs. Our research spans all territorial scales, from local and regional to national and international levels.
For questions, comments or collaboration, please email mui@manchester.ac.uk.
Aim
To develop sustainable ways of creating built environments that allow communities resilience to ever-changing urban and cross-territorial issues.
MUI's view on built environment
Human activities are largely shaped by the built environment, which consists of various physical and social infrastructures. The notion of physical space is being increasingly challenged by digitalisation.
As information grows exponentially and digital spaces expand, the built environment becomes more intertwined with a complex web of information and social networks. This highlights a need to understand the invisible spaces within visible environments.
These evolving complexities in the global urban landscape create both opportunities and challenges, which manifest across local, regional, sub-national, national and international scales.
Aim
To create urban green spaces, places and ecosystems for people and nature.
MUI's view on green cities
Interacting environmental, economic, and social drivers of change, and the resulting climate and biodiversity crises, present major cross-cutting challenges in our increasingly interconnected and urbanised world. Green and blue infrastructure and ecosystems have a critical role to play in addressing these challenges.
Accommodating environmental processes, natural systems and wildlife within cities and urban areas is crucial for transitioning towards more sustainable, resilient and equitable green spaces and places. But we must also recognise that urban greening benefits are not always evenly spread and can even create or exacerbate socio-ecological inequalities.
Over recent decades, our researchers have provided important insights into urban green and blue infrastructure and ecosystem functions, services and pressures, and associated responses covering policy, planning and practice-related themes.
Our research ranges across physical geography, ecosystems and biodiversity, climate change adaptation and resilience, health and social impacts, nature restoration and infrastructural adaptation, and urban environmental policy and planning.
We have a particular interest in developing collaborative research outputs that can be utilised in practice. Our researchers have a strong record in this area and have succeeded in generating impact within and beyond the academic community.
Looking forward, we are focused on advancing collaborative research and generating positive impact within the field of green cities.
Aim
To explore the impact of urban living on health and wellbeing, and how cities shape and influence these outcomes.
MUI’s view on health and wellbeing
Urban living shapes health and wellbeing through the dynamic interplay of physical, social, and digital environments. As urbanisation accelerates globally - particularly in low- and middle-income countries - urban health has become a growing field of research internationally.
Urban health challenges, such as ageing populations, migration, environmental stressors, and the internationalisation of metropolitan regions, require innovative solutions informed by multidisciplinary research.
Policymakers play a critical role in addressing these challenges. Many urban health policies are determined at the local level, requiring robust, area-specific data to inform effective strategies and to engage and influence national and international policy.
At the heart of this research are city residents, whose insights are vital to shaping impactful urban health interventions.
Aim
To explore the complex and multi-faceted challenges associated with sustainable urban mobility locally, nationally and globally.
MUI’s view on transport and mobilities
As a fundamental enabler of daily life, urban transport systems play a crucial role in the movement of people, goods, and services. Design, accessibility, and socio-spatial distribution intersect with broader urban development challenges, directly impacting sustainability, economic opportunities, social equity, and public health.
The Transport and Mobilities Research Challenge Area brings together experts from diverse disciplines—including engineering, economics, planning, urban design, geography, sociology, public health, and environmental studies—to develop integrated approaches to transport research and practice.
Across our four key research challenge areas we specifically engage with three cross-cutting themes.
Inequalities
Addressing global inequalities is a core research priority across The University of Manchester. MUI researchers apply this principle in all our research endeavours to consider how income, gender, age, ethnicity, disability and sexual identity have fundamental effects on people's quality of life, social wellbeing and life opportunities in changing urban landscapes.
Polycrisis
The 21st century is characterised by a series of interrelated crises termed polycrisis by scholars. In many cases, addressing one crisis threatens to exacerbate another, so it presents policymakers with stark choices. For example, the green energy transition is costly and it can provoke popular resistance in the context of the cost-of-living crisis.
To make matters worse, heightened geopolitical rivalry and the proliferation of armed conflict inhibit the cooperation that is needed to address global crises. Although the world remains deeply interconnected, the IMF laments increasing geoeconomic fragmentation that threatens to undermine progress towards the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Political economy
Cities and urban areas are the engines of economic growth and prosperity. While hard economic inputs such as labour and capital are the two most important resources, appropriate rules, robust regulations and effective policies are needed to optimise the outcomes of the economic inputs.
These institutional structures are driven by the political systems that, in turn, govern urban economic systems. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the political economy of cities and urban areas that determine both private and public sector dynamics.