They’re a long way from the traditional inner-city ‘Chinatowns’, but the suburbs are where you’ll find 21st-century China-born migrants settling.
Jandrie Lombard/Shutterstock
China-born migrants in Australia’s capital cities are becoming more suburban, but there are differences in settlement patterns between the biggest cities and smaller cities.
More than 25% of Hurstville residents were born in China, but the Sydney suburb is the exception to the rule.
Philip Terry Graham/Flickr
This is the first article in our series, Australian Cities in the Asian Century, which looks at the impact of the rise of China and Chinese migration on our cities.
Barangaroo is a development on Sydney Harbour with strong green credentials, but it’s overwhelmingly the well-off who enjoy the benefits.
Brendan Esposito/AAP
Barangaroo is an example of a development with admirable green credentials, but it is also an exclusive precinct that has played a role in displacing the disadvantaged from this part of Sydney.
People should be able to feel at home regardless of whether they own the place they live in.
Halfpoint/Shutterstock
Renting a house shouldn’t mean it’s not home. Until we change our meaning of home by separating it from ownership, we will never be able to “fix” Australia’s housing crisis.
Australian cities need to sustain higher levels of construction and to provide higher-density developments to ensure growing populations have access to affordable housing.
Brendan Esposito/AAP
Governments should stop offering false hopes and pandering to NIMBY pressures. As well as increased public and private housing supply, growing cities need well-designed higher-density development.
Another election, another infrastructure promise – in the Andrews government’s case, a $50 billion suburban rail loop.
Penny Stephens/AAP
In the election bidding wars, parties commit billions to transport projects, often before all the work needed to justify these has been done. More cost-effective alternatives hardly get a look-in.
The Morrison government is but the latest to indulge in the policy fantasy of redirecting population growth to regional Australia.
Simon Dallinger/AAP
Efforts by governments to redirect population growth to regional Australia have never worked. Even if such policies could be made to work, they probably wouldn’t be worth the costs.
Ensuring both men and women have access to baby changing facilities is one of many issues that gender equality mapping can help tackle.
Pixabay
The map will help uncover real experiences of gender inequality in public places, from sports facilities to public transport, community services and infrastructure, to simply walking down the street.
The TV drama SeaChange had a huge public impact, which made the town where it was filmed, Barwon Heads on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula, a highly desirable destination.
Diana Plater/AAP
We read about and watch other people moving to the coast or country and, in doing so, sometimes we’re persuaded to join the seachangers and treechangers ourselves.
An impression of biodiversity sensitive urban design (BSUD) developed by the authors in collaboration with Mauro Baracco, Jonathan Ware and Catherine Horwill of RMIT’s School of Architecture and Design.
Australian cities are home to many threatened species but are also where biodiversity is being destroyed by development. But what if planning and design processes built nature into the urban fabric?
The community environment clearly has a large influence on child development, but exactly which factors are most important?
Tracey Nearmy/AAP
Darwin’s climate is getting even hotter and it’s one of the main reasons people leave the city. A lot more can be done, though, to make our tropical cities safe, cool and enjoyable.
Cairns has an extensive CCTV network, which as well as keeping homeless people under surveillance is sometimes used to help them.
Andreina Schoeberlein/Flickr
Surveillance often results in people who are homeless being the target of enforcement measures. But a new study in Cairns shows surveillance can also be used to achieve more positive social outcomes.
Significant investment in public transport is essential to ensure the Central City CBD can handle the predicted growth in commuting trips.
Dean Lewins/AAP
Central City 2048 proposes one new rail line, three metro lines and almost 300,000 extra jobs for the new CBD, one of three proposed for metropolitan Sydney. Clearly, the investment needed is massive.
Parramatta has been designated as the central CBD of three future city centres in the Greater Sydney region.
haireena/Shutterstock
The Greater Sydney metropolis is envisaged as having three CBDs by mid-century, but an assessment of the proposed Central City around Parramatta shows how much work is needed to make that a reality.
Wittelsbacherplatz, June 2018, Munich, Germany.
Image: Christian Tietz
What exactly is the ‘built environment’?And is the term the best way to frame what we’re trying to achieve today?
Seven years after Tahrir Square became the focal point of the Egyptian Revolution, towering metal gates now control access.
Ahmed Abd El-Fatah/Wikimedia
Today’s urban public spaces tend to represent governments and cities rather than people and citizens. Architects and urban designers should contribute to shaping spaces for freedom and interaction.
The Melbourne Apartments Project developed by the Barnett Foundation offered 28 units to households living within 4km of the site and willing to leave their social housing.
Barnett Foundation
Shared equity models have a dual benefit of making home ownership affordable for people on modest incomes and freeing up scarce social housing for other households in need.
Brisbane has half the population of Sydney and Melbourne, but all three cities have very similar commute distances and times.
superjoseph/Shutterstock
Urban growth has had much less impact on commuting distances and times than media reports would suggest. The explanations include jobs being widely dispersed and residents’ adaptable decision-making.
If cyclist-friendly cities like Copenhagen can offer abundant and conveniently sited parking space for bikes, why not Australian cities?
Grey Geezer/Wikimedia
If cities had backed their active transport goals with investment in adequate cycling infrastructure we might not be having the arguments about dockless bikes ‘littering’ public space.