Must the aggressive, homogeneous global pattern of development take its course in Melbourne’s long-standing multicultural suburb of Footscray?
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Cities – Analysis and Comment
With the winding back of government support for housing, ‘gateway’ suburbs that have in the past accepted and supported recent immigrants are becoming increasingly unaffordable.
About 84% of cranes in Australia are used on residential sites, with commercial projects making up 5% of crane activity. Health, education, infrastructure and recreation projects make up the rest.
People are taking on larger future risks and costs just so they can buy a house. Increases in new home owners are seen as a positive development, but what if they can’t afford the ongoing costs?
Smart cities are usually optimised like a business for speed and efficiency. Placemaking can slow down cities to improve health and wellbeing and promote more democratic engagement of citizens.
There’s every chance that, if mismanaged, driverless vehicle technologies will entrench the ills of car dependency.
Only a small proportion of housing is affordable for low-income earners, while people on Newstart or Youth Allowance don’t have any affordable options at all.
Facing international competition to attract people, jobs and firms, cities are branding themselves. But to succeed they must identify key values and address the question of identity.
A surprise intrusion by a drone on a Darwin woman skinny-dipping in her secluded backyard pool highlights the many weaknesses of current privacy and stalking laws.
There are very few approaches that examine all aspects of the complexity of urban design and development. Ergonomics, human factors and sociotechnical systems methods offer a way forward.
Accra and Johannesburg have some way to go before making it onto anyone’s top 20. Both cities have a desperate gap between rich and poor but inequality is not a uniquely African problem.
A new study shows that restaurateurs would be better off advocating for better public transport access to their precincts rather than for more parking.
Research suggests stakeholders’ understandings of urban consolidation vary. And they often subvert policies to suit their own ends.
For renting to become a truly viable, long-term alternative to home ownership, greater rental affordability and security is needed.
Developed nations need to stop telling smoggy cities to clean up their act and start critiquing their own consumption habits.
Any significant decline in home ownership or equity in a home impacts higher care needs: older people will not have an asset to sell to fund the bonds required to enter aged care accommodation.
It’s not the first time Australia has grappled with concerns about affordable housing. History offers insights that can help inform contemporary debates and policies.
Planning for the future of our cities can no longer ignore growing social, economic and environmental issues that are all exacerbated by wealth and income inequalities.
Pollution, poverty, disease and death: future cities will be grim places, unless we do things differently.
Over the past 15 years, community groups in a rundown inner-city district have created public murals as part of a successful process of reversing decades of stagnation.
Ambience is a result of a whole range of processes and physical objects. We can use a systems approach to examine and describe what needs to be done to achieve such a subjective quality in a street.
In the second part of our review of what The Conversation experts have to say about housing, we focus on affordability, social housing and what government can do about a growing crisis.
Housing experts writing for The Conversation largely agree on the government policies that are causing negative distortions in the market and the wider economy. And supply is not the key concern.
The symptoms are clear, but the cure will remain elusive until we recognise the many sources of the problem.
Melbourne is Australia’s most rapidly growing city, a title it wrested from Perth around 2013-14. Several of Australia’s big cities are growing well above the national average population growth rate.