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Articles on Cities & Policy

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The homeless people evicted from Flinders Street in Melbourne’s CBD are only the tip of the iceberg of the housing crisis in Victoria. Joe Castro/AAP

States drag feet on affordable housing, with Victoria the worst

Weak state policies, which lack clear targets and mechanisms for providing more and better affordable housing, are part of the problem. Victoria still doesn’t have an affordable housing strategy.
On current trends, renters will eventually outnumber home buyers, representing a fundamental shift in how the economy and wealth generation work. Mick Tsikas/AAP

Moving on from home ownership for ‘Generation Rent’

Generation Rent may force a complete rethinking of home ownership as a basis of our housing systems. Rather than representing security, these housing markets make us vulnerable.
The opera house is raised on a terraced platform, away from the shore like an island amphitheatre. Terence Wong from www.shutterstock.com

Why the Sydney Opera House is a little overcooked

Construction should have stopped once the roofs were erected. Any citizen could then have walked up to the terraced amphitheatre, sat down and gazed back at the country from this shrine to the nation.
To understand how households cope, we may need to look beneath broad patterns of affordability to the interplay of housing costs with other problems. IDuke/Wikimedia Commons

Housing affordability problems might not be all bad

Housing affordability is often not the only problem households face. More often the compounding effects of multiple problems leave people unable to cope, which is why one solution won’t work for all.
Poorly resourced small towns like Marysville often struggle to recover from disasters like the Black Saturday bushfires. Andrew Brownbill/AAP

We can learn a lot from disasters, and we now know some areas don’t recover

Rebuilding small communities on the same site in the same way seldom works. It’s not about getting back to where you were, but rather grasping the opportunity to create a more resilient place.
As well as meeting his UK counterpart, Philip Hammond (flanked by Australian High Commissioner Alexander Downer), Scott Morrison has been talking with UK housing finance experts. Will Oliver/EPA

Sensible reform to finance affordable housing deserves cross-party support

Scott Morrison has been exploring a UK model for channelling investment via a specialist financial intermediary into new affordable housing provided by landlords with a social purpose. It makes sense.
The housing affordability crisis isn’t limited to the big cities – the Tweed Heads area, for instance, is rated worse than Melbourne in the latest survey. AAP

A housing affordability crisis in regional Australia? Yes, and here’s why

The affordability crisis in regional Australia has a long history. In some places the problem is even worse for residents than in the capital cities.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian needs to shed the Treasury view of housing construction as a silver bullet and back former premier Mike Baird’s social and affordable housing program. Nikki Short/AAP

If you’re serious about affordable Sydney housing, Premier, here’s a must-do list

The new NSW premier is right to identify housing affordability as a priority for the people and economy of Sydney. It’s not just housing supply that’s the problem – action is needed on many fronts.
An innovative water-sensitive project aims to dramatically improve the health of slums and their environment together.

Water-sensitive innovations to transform health of slums and environment

A five-year project announced today will implement an innovative water-sensitive approach tailored to informal settlements. The goal is to revitalise 24 communities in Fiji and Indonesia.
Federal and state agencies are using powerful automated data-matching programs to identify properties that are generating income and might be liable for tax. from www.shutterstock.com

Airbnb hosts beware – it’s not just Centrelink using robo-debt systems

State revenue offices are using data matching to identify people who earn income from Airbnb, then sending notices that they may be liable for land tax, even though this remains a legal grey area.
Under pressure from media coverage like this, Lord Mayor Robert Doyle wants to ban people from sleeping on Melbourne’s streets. Herald Sun

Ban on sleeping rough does nothing to fix the problems of homelessness

Bans are ineffective when used against populations that have nowhere else to go. Importantly, research shows that punitive approaches to the homeless cost more than supported housing strategies.
Choosing Cairns or Townsville as a northern Queensland capital would set off a political storm, as would new regional governments around Australia. Dan Peled/AAP

If we scrapped the states, increasing Canberra’s clout would be a backward step

Federal politicians and the public like the idea of abolishing the states. But consider the likely result: a more powerful Canberra, with regional governments amounting to glorified shire councils.
How will it fit in? Every new development should consider the existing neighbourhood character. Tod Jones

When gentrification lacks empathy: a case study

The Melbourne suburb of Richmond is prime inner-city real estate, but the community is paying a price for redevelopment that jars with the existing neighbourhood.
The 20-metre-long Paris Navigating Gym is propelled along the Seine by human power. Carlo Ratti Associati

How wearable devices are reinventing our cities as open-air gyms

Physical exercise was once primarily an open-air activity, until gym training and monitoring took hold. Digital devices and augmented reality now offer the freedom to head out into the city again.

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