Kim Dovey, The University of Melbourne et Elek Pafka, The University of Melbourne
We’re still in the early days of understanding how cities work. But we do know that creative, healthy and productive cities have certain things in common – and it’s all to do with their ‘urban DMA’.
The system of apartheid is long gone. But its legacy of poor funding for historically black universities - and of planning that banished black universities to cities’ margins - remains.
The Australian Automobile Association said that a new report showed that “the average Australian family is spending up to $22,000 every year to get around.” Is that accurate?
It’s a project that creates benefits for Melbourne’s western suburbs and the state as a whole. But the inner-city elite don’t like it and recent experience suggests their opinion holds sway.
The Coalition, Labor, and the Greens are making substantial commitments to projects that not only lack proper business cases, but are not even on the Infrastructure Australia priority list at all.
The 2016 articulation of an urban agenda assumes building more highways, railways and trams will produce better, more productive cities that somehow give everyone a job.
Using elements of game play, we can create incentives for people to change how and when they make various transport choices in ways that enable the whole system to work better.
Early residents in new communities are known as ‘pioneers’ – they arrive before many services are in place. A five-year study points to the many benefits of putting in good services early on.
Much of the infrastructure Australia needs will be funded by “value capture” – raising tax revenue by boosting land values. Some have decried it as a tax hike in all but name, but it isn’t really.
The budget paints a picture of higher debt, little relief for growing cities crying out for infrastructure investment, and no detail of how City Deals might work to fix this.
With the failures of past planning now apparent, the unruly threat of a damaged and depleting planet is ushering us toward a fourth era of urban restructuring. What might City v4.0 look like?
Sydney, as a whole, is lurching toward an urban structure where its transportation problems are impossible to solve. The only alternative is to create new centres of employment.
If planning decisions properly considered the value of trees in a city, we could have a modern transport system and tree-lined views to enhance the journey.