The Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) is a transdisciplinary research centre focused on urban sustainability in a global frame. Here, Ethiopia at large and Addis Ababa as the capital play a very important role for various research activities and cooperations with EiABC running at the FCL. Cities accommodate more people today than at any point in history. Cities are more interconnected than ever before. Cities concentrate some of the most intractable of contemporary social, political and economic dilemmas. And, as substantial consumers of energy and producers of greenhouse gases, cities are central to the project for global environmental sustainability. But successful cities are also, more than ever, the engines of national and transnational economies, sites of diversity and creativity, and centres of innovation and entrepreneurship. As such, cities are likely to be the places where the challenges of urbanization and environmental sustainability will be most productively addressed.