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.