When an ageing person is forced to move out of their family home, that can trigger a host of problems that policy is doing little to prevent.
Diego Cervo/Shutterstock
Millions of older Australians live in houses that don’t safely meet their needs, but they’re not ready for a nursing home. Lack of suitable housing and the moving costs leave them with nowhere to go.
Increasingly insecure pathways to home ownership are not just a problem for property markets. The fallout is likely to hit retirement incomes, the welfare base, gender equity and the broader economy.
In the past, house building matched high immigration. Construction has increased, particularly in Sydney, but needs to make up the backlog of a decade of undersupply.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Australian governments are faced with a choice: make the difficult decisions to fix planning systems so more houses can be built, or tap the brakes on Australia’s migrant intake.
The congestion charge has helped to ease traffic and raise funds. But the rise of Uber and other private hire vehicles have raised unforeseen challenges.
Australia’s big cities, like Sydney, have outgrown the historical patchwork governance structure of local councils.
SF photo/Shutterstock
Scholars and planners have long pointed out the need in Australia’s big cities for democratic governance structures that operate at a citywide scale. Now Infrastructure Australia has weighed in.
Local traders win the day at Chrisp Street Market.
Shutterstock.
Hobart is a smaller city with big city problems that have become an election issue. Recent growth is creating traffic congestion that affects productivity, residents’ health and liveability.
Mental short-cuts guide our everyday decision-making. Unfortunately, five biases can lead us to deny responsibility for our poor decisions and are creating problems for share-bike schemes.
Apartment residents need sensible smoking regulations that balance personal freedoms in the home and public health interests, but the law is letting them down.
The Urban Planning Exhibition Centre in Shanghai – good planning is immensely valuable.
Jordiferrer/Wikimedia Commons
Given the challenges Australian cities face, the need for urban planning based on solid research is greater than ever. Sadly, when it comes to research funding, planning is at the back of the queue.
What does a green star rating – One Central Park apartments in Sydney received five stars, for instance – actually mean?
AAP
Buildings are central to creating more sustainable cities, and green ratings are often used to assess how well a building measures up against this goal. But the current system has serious flaws.
Retrofitting older homes to ‘green’ the nation’s housing stock involves much more than installing rooftop solar panels.
Tracey Nearmy/AAP
While new buildings may be the glamorous eco-home pinups, retrofitting existing homes is the main game when it comes to creating energy-efficient, comfortable housing stock for all Australians.
Cars sit in flood water from Boston Harbor on Long Wharf during a coastal storm on Jan. 4, 2018.
AP Photo/Michael Dwyer
It took Melbourne a very long time to create a civic square that served the citizens rather than commerce. Now an Apple store is to be built there, unless parliament supports a disallowance motion.
A remote community in the Cape York region of Queensland.
Decent housing underpins the Closing the Gap goals, with a decade-long national remote housing program having made measurable progress. If the Commonwealth pulls out now, hard-won gains could be lost.