About 84% of cranes in Australia are used on residential sites, with commercial projects making up 5% of crane activity. Health, education, infrastructure and recreation projects make up the rest.
Low-cost housing development on the city outskirts can expose owners to higher costs in the long run.
Paul Miller/AAP
People are taking on larger future risks and costs just so they can buy a house. Increases in new home owners are seen as a positive development, but what if they can’t afford the ongoing costs?
Brisbane cycle path signage: Slow!
Michael Coghlan
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.
More than 6,000 passengers have travelled on the RAC’s driverless electric shuttle bus during a recent trial in South Perth.
AAP/RAC
Only a small proportion of housing is affordable for low-income earners, while people on Newstart or Youth Allowance don’t have any affordable options at all.
Facing international competition to attract people, jobs and firms, cities are branding themselves. But to succeed they must identify key values and address the question of identity.
New technologies make it easier than ever for peeping Toms – and the law isn’t much help to stop them.
Gisele Porcaro/Wikimedia Commons
A surprise intrusion by a drone on a Darwin woman skinny-dipping in her secluded backyard pool highlights the many weaknesses of current privacy and stalking laws.
We need to find new ways to deal with the complexity of modern cities and make them better.
from www.shutterstock.com
There are very few approaches that examine all aspects of the complexity of urban design and development. Ergonomics, human factors and sociotechnical systems methods offer a way forward.
Johannesburg’s night sky with its most densely-populated suburb of Hillbrow in the foreground.
Leon Krige
Accra and Johannesburg have some way to go before making it onto anyone’s top 20. Both cities have a desperate gap between rich and poor but inequality is not a uniquely African problem.
Customers who arrive on foot, by bicycle or by public transport contribute significantly more to the restaurant trade than the business owners realise.
Mik Scheper/flickr
A new study shows that restaurateurs would be better off advocating for better public transport access to their precincts rather than for more parking.
Planning policies in many cities advocate higher-density housing for reasons of sustainability and efficiency.
Dan Peled/AAP
Any significant decline in home ownership or equity in a home impacts higher care needs: older people will not have an asset to sell to fund the bonds required to enter aged care accommodation.
Barnaby Joyce and Scott Morrison have channelled 1940s-era debates in their comments on housing affordability.
AAP/Sam Mooy
It’s not the first time Australia has grappled with concerns about affordable housing. History offers insights that can help inform contemporary debates and policies.
The New Urban Agenda aims to shape sustainable and liveable cities, neighbourhoods and homes.
AAP/Joel Carrett
Planning for the future of our cities can no longer ignore growing social, economic and environmental issues that are all exacerbated by wealth and income inequalities.
Over the past 15 years, community groups in a rundown inner-city district have created public murals as part of a successful process of reversing decades of stagnation.
While many urban design guidelines include ambience as a required ‘city quality’, few provide ways to achieve it.
Ayrcan/flickr
Ambience is a result of a whole range of processes and physical objects. We can use a systems approach to examine and describe what needs to be done to achieve such a subjective quality in a street.
Treasurer Scott Morrison is eyeing bond aggregation as a way to finance social housing, but government funding is still needed under that model.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
In the second part of our review of what The Conversation experts have to say about housing, we focus on affordability, social housing and what government can do about a growing crisis.