Isabel
Fangyi Lu

I'm an urban scholar, strategist and author with a passion for the generative space where communities, institutions and digital life reshape each other. Working across academia, government and community organisations, I am committed to designing better systems and building stronger networks.

My monograph, Reassembling Digital Placemaking: Participation and Politics, explores how communities, industries and governments co-produce urban space, and what that means for participation and democracy. Drawing on cases from Australia, China and Taiwan, it examines #placemaking as a testing ground for urban politics, proposing a tripartite assemblage model of urban politics as issue-based, sociotechnically-enabled, relational and cosmopolitical. My co-edited volume with Nikos Papastergiadis and Danielle Wyatt, Place without Borders: Arts Precincts and Public Culture in Victoria, is forthcoming in 2026.

In practice, I apply this thinking as Senior Advisor at Victoria's Department of Education, leading strategic planning and partnerships for Tech Schools, a state-wide school centres of innovation network. Traditional education flows knowledge downward from centralised pedagogy and intellectual authorities. Tech Schools invert this: the places hold the knowledge, government brings students into that space, and students co-design problems and solutions guided by communities and industry experts.

Beyond government, I'm increasingly drawn to how communities find their footing and voice within the institutions that resource them. I work through my own practice, Ouro, with place-based and regenerative communities navigating institutional systems.

With my partner and our cat Ophelia, I commute between Naarm (Melbourne) and regional Victoria as a proud owner and supporter of Passive House. I welcome collaboration on research, writing and strategic projects in English and Mandarin. Drop a line.