In short, following Marshall McLuhan's famous provocation, the editors focus less on the message and more on the medium of research. This involves retreating from research contents-the topics, themes, questions, hypotheses, insights, ideas, concepts, and thoughts-for the moment to consider the materials, methods, tools, techniques, and approaches that support them. This change in perspective reveals a rich array of research approaches that include: the visual documentationof complex stakeholder interests, political and economic circumstances in built form and design vision; two-and three-dimensional mapping of vegetation, temperature and humidity, in conjunction with point cloudterrestrial and airborne laser-scanning technology; gathering data from sensors and geospatial data; emergence of "solution spaces"and multi-dimensional complexity science; subject oriented approaches to behavioural and cognitive decision making in city navigation; and approaches to emergent phenomena such as extended urbanisation that are not always visible to existing analytical or documentary lenses.

This book, the rst in a planned series, reports on the Future Cities Laboratory and its ambitious mission to shape sustainable future cities through science, by design, in place. It offers a global perspective on cities from the vantage point of Asia, where the laboratory is based. This view has particular signi cance today as the fortunes of Asia, the world's most populous and rapidly urbanising continent, will also delineate the prospects of the planet.The series as a whole will assemble the necessary indicia-indications, clues, evidence-on how cities grow and ourish, produce and innovate, consume and waste, threaten and destroy, to form practical strategies for future city making. The rst volume in the series focuses on the challenges that future cities pose to sustainability. The second will concentrate on the innovative approaches necessary for addressing those challenges. The third will present concrete scenarios and action plans that emerge from such approaches.

This third and final volume in the Indicia book series presents the results of the Future Cities Laboratory research program in the form of "actions" for sustainable city-making. It complements the first and second volumes of the series that respec- tively documented the research challenges and approaches that prefigured these results. Read together, the three volumes chart the full arc and many productive eddies of the five-year programme and its mission to shape sustainable future cities. Research results are presented as condensed actions that take the form of general principles, recommendations, practical guidelines, and rules of thumb. The actions are neither technical standards nor prescriptive check-lists but invitations to explore, test and refine research insights within the context in which the reader lives, works and acts. The credibility, salience and legitimacy of each action is underpinned by scientific publications (journal articles, books and exhibitions) presented in extensive footnotes and suggestions for further reading.

Urbanization has evolved dramatically from monocentric settlements to polycentric networks and megacities of previously inconceivable size and population. This escalation of quantities and scales has ignited a fascination with the phenomenon of megacities. The book attempts to define megacities and understand their processes and systems of organization, gleaning lessons for researchers, practitioners, politicians and the general public. The Megacities Foundation, which initiated this discussion and book, has set a benchmark in the architectural profession, and has actively encouraged debate on megacities for the last 15 years by inviting leading international academics and practitioners from the fields of architecture, economics, geography, sociology and urban planning. This book offers a compilation of the best lectures on the evolution, governance and design guidelines of megacities.