Cities aren’t just a male creation, but women’s contributions have been sidelined. There are ways we can rediscover and restore these women to their rightful place in the stories of our cities.
Big Issue sellers get social contact and dignity out of their work, but it’s not a secure pathway out of poverty and homelessness.
Joe Castro/AAP
Big Issue sellers get social contact and dignity out of their work, but it’s not a secure pathway out of poverty and homelessness. Social enterprises enable small steps; governments can do much more.
An outstanding example of sustainable residential building, Breathe Architecture’s The Commons apartments in Melbourne won a 2014 National Architecture Award.
Image courtesy of Australian Institute of Architects
New South Wales is the only state that has made meaningful progress on legislation and enforcement of standards capable of creating a sustainable built environment.
A tiny house in the backyard appeals to some as a solution that offers both affordability and sustainability.
Think Out Loud/flick
New research has found a marked increase in people, particularly among women over 50, who are building or want to build a tiny house. However, inflexible planning rules often stand in their way.
The impact of Airbnb varies from city to city and suburb to suburb.
AlesiaKan/shutterstock
About 10% of empty dwellings on census night – 1.2% of all housing – were available for rental and vacancy rates have changed little in 35 years. Could governments be overreacting?
A drain carries water but does little else, but imagine how different the neighbourhood would be if the drain could be transformed into a living stream.
Zoe Myers
Drains take up precious but inaccessible open space in our cities. Converting these to living streams running through the suburbs could make for healthier places in multiple ways.
Cities and their residents’ needs in public space have changed, but the type and function of the furniture are stuck in the past.
Carlos Neto/shutterstock.com
With cities becoming more dense and housing more crowded, people rely more than ever on well-designed public spaces, so why hasn’t the furniture changed with the times?
The Paul Klee Centre in Bern, Switzerland, looks great, but where are the people?
Richard Gomez Angel/Unsplash
By putting the users of buildings – people – at the centre of the process of designing buildings and infrastructure, we can create healthier, more human-centred spaces.
A house and land on the River Derwent, Tasmania, 1822.
National Library of Australia
The egalitarian myth behind the great Australian dream of home ownership is at odds with the first rules of land granting in the colonies. Even then, property ownership depended on wealth and status.
Solar panels are integrated into a block of flats in the Viikki area of Helsinki, Finland.
Pöllö/Wikimedia
Not everyone can afford to pay for solar panels up front, but local planners can help disadvantaged households overcome energy poverty in several ways.
The Grocon-built 77-apartment Greenwich Fairfield development in Melbourne includes ten apartments for people with disability.
Artist's impression, Grocon
The NDIS has the resources and mandate to develop a mature market that delivers suitable housing for people with high disability needs, including the more than 6,200 young people now in aged care.
The Netherlands’ cycleways are popular for commuting, because the infrastructure is safe, accessible and convenient.
The Alternative Department for Transport
The evidence suggests a small investment in cycling infrastructure, combined with less punitive policing, would enable more Australians to escape daily traffic congestion.
#WeLiveHere2017 aims to turn inanimate buildings into metaphorical sentient structures, with ‘mood lights’ expressing the feelings of Matavai and Turanga Tower residents about their neighbourhood’s redevelopment.
Nic Walker courtesy of #WeLiveHere2017
Residents of two high-rise public housing blocks are being given ‘mood lights’ to express how they feel based on their experience of the process of redeveloping their neighbourhood.
Among Australia’s eight largest regional cities, Hobart is very inwardly connected.
AAP/Dave Hunt
Knowing a city’s professional network ratio helps to understand how connected its inhabitants are to other markets, customers and ideas. All support innovation, adaptation and city growth.
So much for context – authorities are allowing large out-of-place buildings in the higher-density retrofitting push.
Linley Lutton
Planners wish to correct past errors by increasing densities, discouraging car dependency and mixing land uses. But imposing imported strategies on Australian cities is producing unhappy results.
City mayors have taken on a prominent role in committing to action on climate change through forums such as the C40.
Henry Romero/Reuters
It’s a good thing that cities aspire to lead the way in acting on climate change in the absence of stronger national action. But a closer look reveals the limitations of current city-based efforts.
Around 100 coffee shops known as café con piernas – coffee with legs – operate within a five-kilometre radius of the Santiago CBD.
Babak Fakhamzadeh/flickr
Coffee and sex are both highly marketable commodities. But who would have thought that the capital of one of Latin America’s most socially conservative countries would combine them in its cafes?
Soaring heating costs mean many vulnerable Australians endure cold houses and the associated risks to their health.
Paul Vasarhelyi from www.shutterstock.com
The idea of a hot and sunny land is so baked into our thinking about Australia that we’ve failed to design and build houses that protect us from the cold.
At first glance, old industrial sites, like this one in Carrington Street, don’t look like much. But they provide vital spaces for creative precincts to flourish.
Paul Jones
A new project documents who uses urban industrial lands slated for redevelopment. It reveals a vibrant but largely hidden sector at the interface between creative industries and small manufacturing.