Research on where businesses and households want to be points to growth in suburban and regional centres on the coast, with Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth also gaining ground on Sydney and Melbourne.
Dennis Penu, International Institute of Social Studies
Ghana lost its federalism due to mistaken political choices and missed opportunities, suggesting that other federations in Africa might well be at similar risk.
Imagine if Facebook’s content was hosted on a blockchain — across many thousands of ordinary computers — and governed equally by each of them, rather than Mark Zuckerberg.
After the ‘world’s biggest work-from-home experiment’, many people (and their employers) might decide they needn’t commute every day. If even a fraction do that, infrastructure needs will change.
The demands on land and resources from our fast-growing cities are unsustainable, as are the wastes they produce. Yet still our leaders act as if unlimited growth is possible.
Other countries are planning new cities using technological innovation to achieve more sustainable development. Such plans aren’t new for Australia, but existing city growth is the focus of attention.
Instead of spending ever more on roads, we can learn from Vancouver’s use of congestion as a ‘friend’ in managing the development of transport networks and of the city itself.
Business-as-usual projections assume our four biggest cities must absorb three-quarters of Australia’s population growth over the next 30 years. Might new cities be a better way to deal with it?
The centralised regulation of electric power in Nigeria is stalling progress in the sector. To achieve stable power supply, the country must obey its constitution and decentralise regulation.
The Turnbull government’s cities policy is the latest incarnation of ‘the-Commonwealth-knows-best’ approach, with little regard for whether urban issues are best resolved at the metropolitan level.
Representative and accountable metropolitan government is needed to lead metro-scale planning, infrastructure investment and services, and partnerships with the private sector and civil society.
Associate Professor, Department of Environmental and Geographical Science and African Climate and Development Initiative Research Chair, University of Cape Town