The International Center of Urbanism (ICoU) focuses on the most pressing contemporary issues at stake in settlements and environments across the globe. Urbanization continues to gallop ahead in most parts of the world, while massive restructuring is clearly necessary in postindustrial societies. At the same time, business as usual is challenged by unprecedented migration of humans and species and the consequences of climate change. The ICoU studies cases in urbanism (the science of the city) as well as develops strategies for urbanism (the discipline that acts upon the city). The worldwide spectrum of changing urban conditions in interaction with the continuous adaptation of urbanism provide a living lab for the center’s work. On the one hand, it draws upon the wide range of alternatives to the contemporary body of mainstream conventional, almost hegemonic, urban projects that do little more than surf on the neo-liberal waves of market-driven globalism. On the other hand, it seeks to shed light on emerging critical practices, not so much as models or sterile best practices, but as new interactions that unfold between changing urban development conditions and urbanism. It critically evaluates and develops a broad spectrum of investigations that work across disciplinary boundaries and / or which actively engage new forms of interpretation. It seeks to re-read / re-write urban histories as well as to create for new tools to describe, understand, interpret and qualitatively and structurally intervene in the transformative processes conditioning urbanism. The ICoU is embedded with the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering Science at KU Leuven. It collaborates with a vast network of international and local actors, in which the more than 2,500 alumni across 80+ countries constitute a lively sounding board.