For a long time, anthropologists working in the Pacific have tended to leave towns and cities and head to the rural and remote places perceived as the authentic ‘heartlands’ of these locations. However, the rate and pace of urbanisation in the region is presenting new challenges and opportunities both for the Pacific peoples who dwell in these places and for those who come to learn about them.This panel discussion brings together academics and development workers to examine the ways in which rural and urban spaces are being remade as a result of emergent social and economic structures as well as climate change. What are the positives and negatives of urbanisation in the Pacific? And how can academics and policy makers think through these transformations in ways that take into account the impacts of ethnicity, gender and class on rights and belonging? Drawing on expertise in Melanesia in particular, this panel will explore these questions to contribute to important – even urgent – debate on the changing places of the Pacific.