Like a 5D movie on speed, the city today defies conventional boundaries. This raises new questions about what we imagine to be ‘the city’ – and how we as a democratic community can shape it.
If the sharing economy is here to stay, planners and designers must respond with imagination to spread the positive effects of the tourism economy for the benefit of residents as well as tourists.
This Friday is the 11th PARKing Day, when people pay a parking meter, then turn the space into a pop-up parklet. It’s a day that invites citizens to rethink the city and their place in it.
Art schools are emerging globally as very powerful instruments of urban renewal. In a time of transformation, Sydney must learn to tap into the value of having multiple art colleges.
In Australia, a small but growing cadre of residents is experimenting with hacktivism in planning. Giving a voice to real people living in everyday places can help ensure planning meets public needs.
Bigger cities increase wages, output and innovation, but also problems of congestion and pollution. Congestion charges can minimise these problems by dramatically improving traffic flows.
Millions of people need to be confident that suitable public toilets will be available when they leave their homes. A shortage of such facilities is a serious problem for an ageing population.
City-centric thinking arguably obscures connections between ‘humans’ and ‘nature’, and ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ or ‘wild’. Growing evidence of the depths of these links is testing the concept of ‘urban’.
Bringing significant benefits to an emergent middle class, Dhaka’s cultural, economic, environmental and political landscapes are being rapidly but unevenly transformed.
The rhetoric of ‘smart cities’ is dominated by the economic, with little reference to the natural world and its plight. Truly smart and resilient cities need to be more in tune with the planet.
Australia’s Smart Cities Plan largely conveys a limited role for people: they live, work and consume. This neglects the rich body of work calling for better human engagement in smart cities.
In an age of data-driven urban science, we need to remember how Jane Jacobs gave voice to the multiple languages, meanings, experiences and knowledge systems of a vibrant city.
Cities are home to many different people who will not always agree. We need to learn to embrace public debate as an ongoing, constructive process for working through diverse views and values.