COVID-19 is a health and economic crisis that’s taken the world by surprise, but could also be an opportunity for Australia to shape a smarter, greener, safer, and healthier future for our cities.

By taking a systems-based approach and a long-term perspective, researchers can help those responsible to lay the foundations of more adaptive, resilient cities – cities that will better support our response, as a nation, to pandemics and other future shocks.

CSIRO has been working with government, business, industry and community groups to find innovative ways of integrating science with urban planning and design through its Future Cities initiative. The initiative has established two Urban Living Labs – one in Western Sydney and the other in Darwin – with a third proposed for Ginninderra in Canberra.

CSIRO is drawing on its 100-year history to develop a missions program and a ‘Team Australia’ approach with partners across science and industry, to bolster Australia’s COVID-19 recovery and build long term resilience.

CSIRO will direct $100 million annually to the co-creation of missions, working with the brightest minds across the research sector and industry. The program of large scale, major scientific and collaborative research initiatives, will be aimed at solving some of Australia’s greatest challenges, focused on outcomes that lead to positive impact, new jobs and economic growth.

It only takes a few minutes among the community shrub plantings at Ginninderra to see and hear the transformation that is taking place across the Box Gum Woodland and Dry Forest sites.

A thick layer of  shrubs, some towering over 3-4 metres, can now be found across many of the plots where local residents and community volunteers planted around 3500 shrubs into two zones of the  Box Gum Woodland in 2017.