Green space, easily accessible to everyone no matter what their income, should be a priority in designing high-density residential areas.
Marcus Jaaske from www.shutterstock.com
Being crowded into poor-quality high-density units harms residents' health, but design features that are known to promote wellbeing can make a big difference to the lives of low-income households.
The inexorable logic of the market will create suburban concentrations of lower-income households on a scale hitherto only experienced in the legacy inner-city high-rise public housing estates
For the first time in Australia, more higher-density housing than detached housing was being built last year. Compact cities have pros and cons, but the downsides fall more heavily on the poor.
In the push for more compact cities, don't forget the ways apartment living is different. And often the downsides of these differences weigh heavily on low-income and disadvantaged households.
Smart city thinking makes good use of rapidly developing technology to help make cities work better, easier-to-navigate, safer, healthier and more enjoyable places to live.
Dallas Rogers speaks with Nicole Gurran about the rise of AirBnb and what the limited data publicly available can tell us about how it's blurring the line between residential property and tourism.
The primacy given to the car has shaped our cities, the roads that serve them and our very thinking about the place of driving in our lives. And it's a mindset that leaves cyclists highly vulnerable.
The neediest suburbs get a much poorer deal in Sydney than in Melbourne. A new study provides a suburb-by-suburb breakdown of state investment, including what facilities and services have been funded.
Traditional urban planning is being stretched by the pace at which renewable energy systems are being installed. New codes and guidelines are needed to manage emerging conflicts over land use.
Architecture can affect behaviour and the choices we make. The brief is out for a centre to replace the Don Dale facility, but word is, it's 'a disgrace'. We can do much better.
Despite the rise of feminism, strip clubs and other 'sexual entertainment' businesses have proliferated in our cities. And women are feeling the harmful impacts of the industry's presence.
Early intervention via education and training will cost money straight up. But it makes no sense to watch young people drift through unemployment and disengagement and turn into unemployable adults.
Victoria offers lessons in the benefits of integrating metropolitan and regional planning, using regional rail to shrink distance and ease the pressures of growth on our big capital cities.
While many talk about 30-minute cities, some aim for residents to be able to get to most services within 20 minutes. But cities like Melbourne have an awful lot of work to do to achieve their goal.
Coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef could lead to increased vulnerability of Queensland coastal cities and towns, and not only through its impacts on the tourism industry.
Even where communities are mixed, many inner-city families go to extraordinary financial and geographic lengths to ensure their children do not go to school with children from 'the flats'.
Reasoned debates on sustainable migration intake levels are important. But transport and health infrastructure shortfalls in Western Sydney won't be solved by reactive anti-immigration attitudes.
Australians are losing the backyards that once served as retreats from the stresses of city living. Our health is likely to suffer as cities become less green and much hotter.
People go to the beach in large numbers and for many different reasons, and sometimes that’s a recipe for conflict.
tazzymoto from www.shutterstock.com
In many ways, the conflict we see on our beaches may be a small price to pay for the free and open access to our beaches, which Australians have long fought to preserve.
Retirees are often urged to downsize to free up suburban properties for the next generation and for higher-density development. What's being ignored is the costs of moving into a unit or apartment.
Rail investments have brought Ballarat, Geelong and other regional centres closer in travel time to Melbourne than many outer suburbs.
Tony & Wayne/flickr
Victoria offers lessons in the benefits of integrating metropolitan and regional planning, using regional rail to shrink distance and ease the pressures of growth on our big capital cities.
The Sirius building and the Heritage Act are both products of a significant part of Sydney’s history: the Green Bans movement.
Dean Lewins/AAP
Social housing can certainly have heritage significance. Over more than 100 years, it has been shaped by contemporary architectural and political ideas, sometimes in an exemplary way.
Some local councils are more tolerant than others in allowing residents to grow food where they want.
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Urban residents are increasingly keen to farm verges, parks, rooftops and backyards, but planning rules sometimes stand in the way.
Residents of high-density housing might value features such as balconies, but when roads get busy this increases exposure to pollution.
Adam J.W.C./Wikipedia
Many new housing developments are being built along busy roads and rail lines, but lack design features that would reduce occupants' exposure to harmful traffic pollution.
While homelessness is becoming more visible, it is not new in affluent societies like Australia.
AAP/Joe Castro
The promotion of home ownership as a way of funding care in later life is part of a broader policy trend toward making people individually responsible for the opportunities they have.
When dog owners meet, it helps build a safe and connected community.
Wrote/flickr
A study of Australian and US cities has demonstrated that pet ownership strengthens people's connections with their neighbours.
Geelong’s relatively high creative industries score, coupled with a robust rate of business entries, provides a solid foundation for steady growth.
paulrommer from www.shutterstock.com
Regional cities can be as effective at generating jobs and growth as their big five metro cousins. But they must identify and build on their strengths to be investment-ready.
A stroll through Sydney’s Marks Park and the nearby tourist attraction Sculptures by the Sea is a different experience if one knows the area’s brutal history.
Leah-Anne Thompson from www.shutterstock.com
Wandering the city by foot helps us look beneath ordinary conceptions of the face value of a place to the meanings built up and lost over time.
When the smart city looks inhuman: a robot police officer from Dubai greets guests at last November’s Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona.
Ramon Costa/AAP
The corporate world has taken the lead in promoting various creative/smart city visions, which struggle to be inclusive, let alone entrust citizens with control over their lives.
Sydney’s bus services are a mix of public and private-operated routes, which complicates any estimates of potential cost savings.
Dean Lewins/AAP
Estimated cost savings for rail and bus franchising from Infrastructure Australia and PwC will have government treasurers salivating. Problem is, the figures are almost certainly far too high.
Households are not competing on equal terms in the private rental market – their perceptions of insecurity vary according to their means, location and reasons for renting.
April Fonti/AAP
Private renters' security of tenure in Australia has less legal protection than in other countries with high private rental rates. A new study reveals mixed responses to this state of uncertainty.
The village bell was once a powerful symbol of sonic identity. Living in the noise of today’s global cities, what sounds exist that express our communal identity?
Eric Fidler/flickr
Sound, as a still relatively unexplored medium of urban design, provides an obvious starting point in the search for new relationships and identities in the contemporary city.
Brisbane cycle path signage: Slow!
Michael Coghlan
Marcus Foth, Queensland University of Technology and Mirko Guaralda, Queensland University of Technology
Smart cities are usually optimised like a business for speed and efficiency. Placemaking can slow down cities to improve health and wellbeing and promote more democratic engagement of citizens.
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