From research to neighbourhoods: Auckland and Calgary connect on urban growth

How can cities provide more housing while creating neighbourhoods where people want to live? What can researchers learn from the professionals delivering development and the communities experiencing change?

These questions shaped the second International Symposium on Urban Analytics and City Sciences, held in Calgary on 29 and 30 October 2026. Co-organised by the University of Calgary’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape and the University of Auckland’s Urban Analytics and City Science Research Beacon, the event brought together more than 50 delegates from different countries and disciplines.

The programme connected academic presentations with dedicated community and industry discussions. Participants examined shared challenges facing cities in Canada and New Zealand, drawing on research alongside professional experience and local knowledge.

For the Beacon, based at the University of Auckland Business School, the symposium put its approach into practice: working across disciplines and engaging with people whose decisions and experiences shape urban life.

A community event organised with More.Neighbours.Calgary focused on the challenges of providing housing in established neighbourhoods. Community advocates Kathryn Davies and Nathan Hawryluk joined Auckland’s I-Ting Chuang, symposium director Francisco Alaniz Uribe and keynote speaker Milad Malekzadeh to discuss densification and urban growth.

The session placed community concerns within the wider research conversation. Questions about additional housing are also questions about access to services, neighbourhood character and how residents experience change. Understanding these concerns is part of understanding whether planning ambitions can be realised.

That attention to everyday experience ran through the programme. Malekzadeh’s keynote, Where Would You Want to Live? Measuring What Makes Compact Cities Work for Their Citizens, invited participants to consider compact development from the perspective of the people living in it.

The industry evening brought researchers together with practitioners from real estate, development and planning to discuss barriers to more compact urban growth. Held in collaboration with the Westman Centre for Real Estate Studies and supported by the Alberta Real Estate Foundation, it featured William Cheung, Ann-Marie Lurie of the Calgary Real Estate Board, and Grace Lui of Colliers, alongside Alaniz Uribe.

The exchange connected questions about housing policy with the conditions under which development takes place. Financing, construction costs and changing demand all influence whether opportunities to build become completed homes.

An earlier panel illustrated the value of bringing different perspectives into the same discussion. Cheung’s research on Auckland’s upzoning examined development decisions at the level of individual sites. Lurie connected those questions to Calgary’s housing market, while Jeremy Klaszus, founder and editor of The Sprawl, examined the infrastructure and public-service implications of continued outward growth.

Calgary’s recent repeal of citywide rezoning gave these discussions particular relevance. It provided a setting in which researchers and practitioners could consider how changing planning rules affect development decisions, while recognising that the longer-term consequences would take time to understand.

Across the two days, the programme explored how spatial data and urban analytics can help explain the relationship between people and places.

Auckland contributors I-Ting Chuang, Katarzyna Sila-Nowicka, Lee Beattie and William Cheung brought perspectives from urban design, geographic information science, planning and property economics. They joined Calgary researchers and City of Calgary planners in discussions spanning growth modelling, human mobility, urban health and transport.

The breadth of the programme encouraged participants to consider how their work connects. Housing location affects travel choices and access to services. Development patterns shape infrastructure demands. Data can help reveal these relationships, while engagement with practitioners and communities helps identify which questions need answering.

Following the inaugural symposium in Auckland in July 2025, the Calgary event extended the Beacon’s international connections and created further opportunities for exchange between the two universities.

Its value lay in bringing people with different responsibilities for urban change into a shared conversation. For the Beacon, this is an essential part of developing research that responds to the needs of cities and the communities within them.