Building defects in apartment blocks are far from unusual. We need to identify the systemic flaws contributing to them.
When it comes to urban planning, the question is not so much how to physically plan our cities differently. Rather, the question is how to convince both the public and our politicians to implement change.
Patrick Tomasso /Unsplash
City planners and politicians have pitched carbon emission reduction as an individual choice but this leads to green gentrification and fails to make broad changes. We need a new guiding philosophy.
Uninviting, car-dominated streets, like this one in Melbourne, reduce our experience menu by discouraging beneficial activities like walking and sharing places with other people.
Daniel Bowen/Flickr
If the menu of potential activities that do us good is made to look uninviting or challenging, we are more likely to choose the easier but less healthy option.
Canberra’s Civic is home to a high concentration of knowledge workers.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Canberra is growing as fast as anywhere in Australia. It's driven by a knowledge economy that is transforming the city centre but is also displacing poorer residents.
With more cyclists and bike-related fatalities, Toronto city council should consider public safety.
Andrew Gook/Unsplash
Build it and they will come: when cities plan for bike lanes, it results in more bicyclists and encourages a bicycle economy.
Australia’s sprawling cities present many challenges to sustainability, but planning innovations can help achieve at least half of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Nils Versemann/Shutterstock
Planning innovations around the world offer inspiration, but ultimately the innovations needed to make Australia's sprawling cities more sustainable must be shaped by local conditions.
Children are not being considered when it comes to urban planning.
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The health concerns that dominate public submissions to the parliamentary inquiry into WestConnex are a reminder that papering over such issues comes back to haunt governments.
A Townsville City Deal was signed two years ago and the city is now one of Queensland’s ten leaders on smart city performance.
Lukas Coch/AAP
How smart are our cities now? In Queensland, a study of all 78 local government areas reveals major gaps between the ten leading the way in becoming smart cities and the rest of the state.
In recent years, Detroit has demolished thousands of abandoned homes annually.
AP Photo/Carlos Osorio
By the time a building is abandoned and falls into disrepair, its community is already suffering. Michigan scholars suggest it's time to plan for structures' end of life before they even go up.
About 56% of Kenya’s urban population currently lives in a slum.
Shutterstock/John Wollwerth
Debabrata Talukdar, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
The rental housing market in Nairobi’s informal settlements offers its tenant households a perverse market outcome of higher prices for lower quality products
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?
Traffic crosses over the Lions Gate Bridge from North Vancouver into Vancouver, B.C., in July 2015. Canada is increasingly becoming a suburban nation, with more people living in car-dependent suburbs.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
It's easy to over-estimate crowding and traffic in highly visible downtown cores and underestimate the vast growth happening in the suburban edges of our metropolitan regions.
Brasília was designed to be a just and inclusive city, but it still failed. Can Egypt's new capital avoid the same mistakes?
Electric scooters could solve the ‘last mile’ problem of urban transport if operators learn from the mistakes that plagued the introduction of dockless bikes.
CrowdSpark/AAP
Shared electric scooters appeal as a way to cover that awkward distance between public transport stops and your destination. But first e-scooter operators must solve the littering and dumping problem.