The inexorable logic of the market will create suburban concentrations of lower-income households on a scale hitherto only experienced in the legacy inner-city high-rise public housing estates.
For the first time in Australia, more higher-density housing than detached housing was being built last year. Compact cities have pros and cons, but the downsides fall more heavily on the poor.
In the push for more compact cities, don’t forget the ways apartment living is different. And often the downsides of these differences weigh heavily on low-income and disadvantaged households.
Smart city thinking makes good use of rapidly developing technology to help make cities work better, easier-to-navigate, safer, healthier and more enjoyable places to live.
The primacy given to the car has shaped our cities, the roads that serve them and our very thinking about the place of driving in our lives. And it’s a mindset that leaves cyclists highly vulnerable.
The neediest suburbs get a much poorer deal in Sydney than in Melbourne. A new study provides a suburb-by-suburb breakdown of state investment, including what facilities and services have been funded.
Traditional urban planning is being stretched by the pace at which renewable energy systems are being installed. New codes and guidelines are needed to manage emerging conflicts over land use.
Architecture can affect behaviour and the choices we make. The brief is out for a centre to replace the Don Dale facility, but word is, it’s ‘a disgrace’. We can do much better.
Despite the rise of feminism, strip clubs and other ‘sexual entertainment’ businesses have proliferated in our cities. And women are feeling the harmful impacts of the industry’s presence.
Early intervention via education and training will cost money straight up. But it makes no sense to watch young people drift through unemployment and disengagement and turn into unemployable adults.
Victoria offers lessons in the benefits of integrating metropolitan and regional planning, using regional rail to shrink distance and ease the pressures of growth on our big capital cities.
New technology could make it practical to build skyscrapers far taller than even today’s highest – and change how people live, work and play in tall buildings.
Climate change is making heat waves more frequent and intense around the world. Cities are hotter than surrounding areas, so urban dwellers – especially minorities and the poor – are at greatest risk.