Melbourne’s ambitions to be a ‘20-minute city’ aren’t likely to be achieved by its recently updated planning strategy.
Nils Versemann / shutterstock.com
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.
A National Guardsman stands at a Detroit intersection during the summer riots of 1967.
AP Photo/David Stephenson
Fifty years ago, Jeffrey Horner watched news broadcasts of the riots that erupted just miles from his home. But he was worlds apart from the racial tensions that had been festering for decades.
Parts of the Great Barrier Reef’s outer reefs can form a natural barrier to coastal recession, thus protecting urban centres.
AAP
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.
Cities and universities can overcome social divides and create better places, but only if they work together.
Forty years on, there is still resistance to mixing with the ‘sort of people’ who were segregated in social housing tower blocks.
David Jackmanson/flickr
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’.
Around one in seven Australia households either cannot get into housing at market rates or are struggling to pay the rent.
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One in seven Australian households is in a state of housing need. A shortfall in social housing supply means some are locked out of the market and others pay much more for rent than they can afford.
The traditional backyard provides a retreat from the pressures of city life.
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.
Night-time lighting – seen here in Chongqing, China – is one of many aspects of city living that can make us more stressed.
Jason Byrne
Research shows planners and built environment professionals have surprisingly poor knowledge about how cities might harm mental health. The good news is that simple steps can make a big difference.
Back in the 1930s, people like this pear peddler in New York City’s Lower East Side often got their news from labor-led media.
AP Photo
Brian Dolber, California State University San Marcos
The newspaper’s new owners harken back to a tradition of labor-led media in the early part of the 20th century, which represented a bulwark against corporate power.
Add up all the neglected costs of downsizing and retirees have good reason to be wary of making the move.
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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.
A woman walks through a market in Luanda, Angola. People who live in Africa’s cities rely heavily on the informal sector.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
Most African cities are expensive, informal and non-industrial. This has produced unique socioeconomic and environmental risks that must be carefully considered in policy development.
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.
Sales of electric vehicles are growing fast, especially in Europe.
Sopotnicki/Shutterstock.com
Shifting to plug-in cars wouldn’t be enough to max out global oil consumption by 2040. But it could help make that happen if cities pitch in and ride-sharing doesn’t crowd out public transportation.
Sydney has the brightest prospects of the 25 Australian cities assessed in the new Knowledge City Index.
pisaphotography from www.shutterstock.com
The changing nature of work means the knowledge capabilities of cities are more important than ever. Here’s what the new Knowledge City Index tells us about 25 Australian cities.
The creative economy is failing to live up to the fast-growing, young entrepreneurial image it promotes.
Ars Electronica/flickr
The notion of the creative sector driving fulfilling work as cities shed old industries has worn thin. But those creatives might be delivering value of a different kind, offering a more human future.
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.
The health benefits of being close to nature are well established.
priscilla du preez/Unsplash
A comparison of 36 Australian cities finds that, unlike Europe, the data on their creativity and culture are not closely linked to their capacity to generate economic value and social well-being.
The dystopian urban future imagined in the Judge Dredd comics warns against letting technology rule our transport systems.
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.