A modest rebalancing of federal tax policy toward build-to-rent housing could fill affordable housing funding gaps. Australian funds are already investing in such a scheme in the US.
Generic plotting of ‘green space’ on an urban plan does not target mental wellbeing unless it is designed to engage us with the sights, sounds and smells of nature.
Zoe Myers
Successful parks and urban green spaces encourage us to linger, to rest, to walk for longer. That, in turn, provides the time to maximise the restorative mental benefits.
The majority of working Australians drive to and from work.
AAP/Dan Himbrechts
Australians are crying out for political leadership. One way our leaders can redeem themselves is by getting to work on a complete shake-up of how we pay for and use transport infrastructure.
Green space, easily accessible to everyone no matter what their income, should be a priority in designing high-density residential areas.
Marcus Jaaske from www.shutterstock.com
Being crowded into poor-quality high-density units harms residents’ health, but design features that are known to promote wellbeing can make a big difference to the lives of low-income households.
Much of what is being built is straightforward ‘investor grade product’ – flats built to attract the burgeoning investment market.
Bill Randolph
The inexorable logic of the market will create suburban concentrations of lower-income households on a scale hitherto only experienced in the legacy inner-city high-rise public housing estates.
Cities are responding to the targeting of crowds by terrorists in vehicles.
Dan Peled/AAP
For the first time in Australia, more higher-density housing than detached housing was being built last year. Compact cities have pros and cons, but the downsides fall more heavily on the poor.
When disputes and other problems of apartment living arise, low-income households’ options are often limited.
Hazel Easthope
In the push for more compact cities, don’t forget the ways apartment living is different. And often the downsides of these differences weigh heavily on low-income and disadvantaged households.
Adelaide’s aims in becoming a smart city include better traffic flows and highly co-ordinated transport networks.
moisseyev/iStock by Getty Images
Smart city thinking makes good use of rapidly developing technology to help make cities work better, easier-to-navigate, safer, healthier and more enjoyable places to live.
The relationship between drivers and cyclists is highly unequal, both physically and culturally.
Photographee.eu from www.shutterstock.com
The primacy given to the car has shaped our cities, the roads that serve them and our very thinking about the place of driving in our lives. And it’s a mindset that leaves cyclists highly vulnerable.
While state investment decreases on average with distance from the CBD, Melbourne’s neediest suburbs aren’t forgotten.
ymgerman from www.shutterstock.com
The neediest suburbs get a much poorer deal in Sydney than in Melbourne. A new study provides a suburb-by-suburb breakdown of state investment, including what facilities and services have been funded.
The BedZED eco-housing development in the UK challenged planning regulations.
Tom Chance/Flickr
Traditional urban planning is being stretched by the pace at which renewable energy systems are being installed. New codes and guidelines are needed to manage emerging conflicts over land use.
Celebrity cows: Southern Girl and Iceberg enjoy a ‘hay cocktail’ at the Commodore Hotel in New York.
Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, contact for re-use
What would possess an Antarctic expedition to take dairy cows to the icy continent? Back in 1933, Admiral Byrd did so for reasons of image-making, publicity and territorial ambition.
To improve on a building like the Don Dale centre, design that properly considers human behaviour needs to take priority for its replacement.
Neda Vanovac/AAP
Architecture can affect behaviour and the choices we make. The brief is out for a centre to replace the Don Dale facility, but word is, it’s ‘a disgrace’. We can do much better.
The homeless camp in Martin Place, Sydney, is an uncomfortable reminder of a deeper systemic crisis.
Brendan Esposito/AAP
The Martin Place camp and others like it should make us uncomfortable. We live in a system that creates and tolerates homelessness.
Due to a fear of being harassed or assaulted, many women go out of their way to avoid travelling through parts of the city where sexual entertainment venues are concentrated.
Blemished Paradise/flickr
Despite the rise of feminism, strip clubs and other ‘sexual entertainment’ businesses have proliferated in our cities. And women are feeling the harmful impacts of the industry’s presence.
Early intervention via education and training is a proven way to stop unemployed youth becoming unemployable adults.
Tom Sodoge/Unsplash
Early intervention via education and training will cost money straight up. But it makes no sense to watch young people drift through unemployment and disengagement and turn into unemployable adults.
Rail investments have brought Ballarat, Geelong and other regional centres closer in travel time to Melbourne than many outer suburbs.
Tony & Wayne/flickr
Victoria offers lessons in the benefits of integrating metropolitan and regional planning, using regional rail to shrink distance and ease the pressures of growth on our big capital cities.
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.