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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Public toilets are an essential amenity, but most of them aren’t places we’d want to go to unless we have to. What does the failure to provide more restful and inviting places say about us?
A new report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows home ownership rates have collapsed: today, just one in four middle-income millennials will own their own home.
Self-driving, shared, electric vehicles and increasing urban density represent four disruptions that will transform city life. But a transport utopia isn’t a guaranteed outcome of their interactions.