Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle explains the revised Queen Victoria Market redevelopment, flanked by Planning Minister Richard Wynne and Premier Daniel Andrews.
Joe Castro/AAP
Mixing public and private housing in urban renewal projects can be a contentious business. But public good and optimal use of public resources, not developer interests, should guide such decisions.
Most women feel unsafe when using public transport. Instead of gender segregation, researchers suggest gender-sensitive design could be a better way to ensure safety for all.
A tax on empty homes will make a modest difference to housing affordability. The sheer wastefulness of our housing system calls for something much more ambitious.
What is an economy for? And how do we build a community where everyone belongs? We need to answer questions like these to create good, sustainable cities.
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.
A co-operative project that maps services in Dhaka shows how communities of citizens can be more than passive users of the digital platforms that increasingly shape our daily lives.
Extreme heat divides people from the environment and from each other. So with the rapid densification of our cities, what kind of legacies are we building for future generations?
To create property systems that are as dynamic as the landscapes we occupy, we might need to start thinking about ourselves as belonging to and answerable to the land, not the other way around.
City dwellers are individually starting to do their bit to live sustainably. Now pioneering businesses are aiming to make ecological and social sustainability part of their bottom line.
Developing principles to create cities that are good for all is not easy. Who decides what is good? And for whom? We desperately need a big and general public discussion about this.
Enshrining the need for planning healthy built environments in legislation will help ensure the fundamental role planners have to play in facilitating healthy lifestyles.
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.
Melbourne's proposed road project relies on assumptions that inflate estimates of the traffic the new link will carry – but other choices about the future of transport are open to us.
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.
Most women feel unsafe when using public transport. Instead of gender segregation, researchers suggest gender-sensitive design could be a better way to ensure safety for all.
A tax on empty homes will make a modest difference to housing affordability. The sheer wastefulness of our housing system calls for something much more ambitious.
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.
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.
Melbourne’s Hosier Lane: some see it as art, others think it’s vandalism.
Bernard Spragg/Flickr
Melbourne's street art has an international reputation and may be a very valuable tourist attraction. But the city remains ambivalent about the activities that have created its 'laneway galleries'.
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.
People look out over an ornamental lake from behind a wrought iron fence at the Carlton Gardens.
State Library of Victoria
Melbourne is a product of British colonial planning policies to control public access and movement in Australian cities. This legacy still influences the use of public spaces today.
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.
The public and finance sectors – but not the government, it seems – are questioning the wisdom of investing in infrastructure for projects like the Adani coal mine.
Lukas Coch/AAP
If infrastructure is to meet the needs and challenges of an uncertain future, we need to move beyond the AAA ratings mindset and aim for net-positive social and ecological outcomes as well.
The uncertainties about the new Badgerys Creek airport in Western Sydney are raising many questions that only good governance can resolve.
from www.shutterstock.com
Building a second Sydney airport will be a demanding engineering project. But the real challenge will be one of governance needed to choreograph the mix of old and new city that will surround it.
The Turnbull government’s line that supply is the key to affordability finds little support among housing experts.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Housing experts writing for The Conversation largely agree on the government policies that are causing negative distortions in the market and the wider economy. And supply is not the key concern.
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