Providing green space can deliver health, social and environmental benefits for all urban residents – few other public health interventions can achieve all of this.
Anne Cleary
Urban green spaces are most effective at delivering their full range of health, social and environmental benefits when physical improvement of the space is coupled with social engagement.
Driven by higher returns on their equity, debt-financed investors are dominating the housing market and shaping its growth.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
New research shows the actual returns on equity for housing investors are higher than most people realise. This helps explain why investors are able to out-compete other home buyers.
Households are not competing on equal terms in the private rental market – their perceptions of insecurity vary according to their means, location and reasons for renting.
April Fonti/AAP
Private renters' security of tenure in Australia has less legal protection than in other countries with high private rental rates. A new study reveals mixed responses to this state of uncertainty.
The person using this shelter in New South Wales certainly meets the official definition of homeless, but how they see themselves is important.
Bidgee/Wikimedia Commons
People who self-identify as 'homeless' have poorer wellbeing than others in the same circumstances, yet that's the label they must adopt to qualify for help.
The village bell was once a powerful symbol of sonic identity. Living in the noise of today’s global cities, what sounds exist that express our communal identity?
Eric Fidler/flickr
Sound, as a still relatively unexplored medium of urban design, provides an obvious starting point in the search for new relationships and identities in the contemporary city.
Noise transformation and community-led design projects are reclaiming unwanted spaces that lay adjacent to motorways.
rogiro/flickr
Communities have an increasing desire to be informed and included in local art, design and infrastructure projects. This has inspired new ways of dealing with noise-afflicted areas.
People look out over an ornamental lake from behind a wrought iron fence at the Carlton Gardens.
State Library of Victoria
Melbourne is a product of British colonial planning policies to control public access and movement in Australian cities. This legacy still influences the use of public spaces today.
Changing concentrations of PM₂.₅ particles, modeled in January 2017 by Prevair.
Prevair
Lille, Lyon, Grenoble, Paris ... In recent months, major French cities have experienced severe pollution spikes. How is this threat to health and the environment assessed?
The Rental Vulnerability Index for Queensland shows the cumulative impact of factors affecting renters across the state.
City Futures Research Centre
Almost nowhere in our capital cities can low-income households – and those on average incomes in Sydney – afford the median rent . Mapping rental vulnerability finds it in regional areas too.
St Canice’s rooftop garden, where a horticultural therapy program demonstrated its benefits for mental health and wellbeing.
Sara Wilkinson, University of Technology Sydney and Fiona Orr, University of Technology Sydney
In a world of increasing urbanisation, density, pressure and, some say, isolation, there's a natural salve for stress, pressure and mental illness. And it’s right above our heads.
A taste of things to come? Storm damage on Sydney’s northern beaches in 2016.
Dean Lewins/AAP
The mall's inventor, Victor Gruen, envisioned thriving hubs of civic activity, rather than bland, asphalt-enclosed shopping centers. Is his original vision now being realized – or further corrupted?
Australia’s population is highly concentrated in a few cities, so once centres like Newcastle have absorbed the spill-over from high-cost capitals, where will the talent go?
City of Newcastle/AAP
Australia has few places to capture the spill-over of talented workers priced out of the big cities. Some may leave the country altogether – and where talent goes, capital flows.
Restoring and expanding Australia’s run-down public housing stocks will need an increase in funding on top of the reforms in the budget.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP
The budget is pushing for a much-needed reboot of the social housing sector. What it isn't offering is extra funding to renew and expand run-down housing stocks.
The budget acknowledges the crisis of affordability for first home buyers, but fails to do enough about demand pressures on prices to put home ownership back within their reach.
The budget brought no increase in rent assistance to help low-income renters in the private rental market.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
For the majority of Australia’s renters, housing will remain unaffordable, insecure, and out of reach following the 2017-18 federal budget.
Having embraced expert advice on bond aggregation to finance housing, Scott Morrison needs to ensure the Commonwealth commits to long-term investment and cooperation.
Julian Smith/AAP
Australian Research Council (DECRA) Fellow and Vice Chancellor's Research Fellow, Centre for Urban Research, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University
