Not only do healthy, well-maintained trees provide shade and benefit the ecosystem, they can have a meaningful social impact: people in newly greened neighbourhoods start to look out for each other.
Three more years for Malcolm Turnbull and the Coalition.
AAP/David Moir
Have you thought about usable space, re-engineering, structural integrity, contamination, insulation and comfort? If not, you need to before jumping into building a home from shipping containers.
Uber may open cities from taxi oligopolies, but ultimately it closes them off to the possibility of more meaningful alternatives.
Scott L/flickr
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.
Green and cool (reflective) roofs are effective tools for cooling overheated cities. Research in Chicago shows that their impacts depend on local conditions, so planners should site them carefully.
It’s critical to protect London’s European connections from Brexit’s isolationism - could independence be the way forward?
Melbourne is powered by the coal-fired stations of Gippsland, which illustrates the problems with any urban strategy that neglects regional roles and interests.
AAP/Julian Smith
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’.
Despite Malcolm Turnbull’s enthusiasm for public transport, the Coalition tends to favour road projects over rail.
AAP/Lukas Coch
The Coalition, Labor, and the Greens are making substantial commitments to projects that not only lack proper business cases, but are not even on the Infrastructure Australia priority list at all.
Without long-term solutions to the imbalance between incomes and house prices, Gen Ys face a lifetime of renting without the financial and emotional security of home ownership.
Transit value capture is used in Hong Kong.
Flickr/Kin
The 2016 articulation of an urban agenda assumes building more highways, railways and trams will produce better, more productive cities that somehow give everyone a job.
A 17th-century folding screen depicting the early Edo period on the site of modern-day Tokyo.
Wikipedia
Edo, which gave rise to Tokyo, was also the world’s largest city three centuries ago. Facing ecological collapse, Edo developed a culture and practices that supported sustainable living.
A chance to shine: festivals bring fringe benefits.
Paula Bailey/Flickr
Forget the main stage headliners, the real festival heroes might be selling you crocodile burgers and mango smoothies.
A national housing policy is needed that recognises how all the sectors – buying, renting, investing, social housing or homeless – are connected.
AAP/Paul Miller
A decent national housing policy is not just about the million or so Australians who are in housing need, marginal housing or homeless. In reality, all the housing sectors are connected.
The Southeast Queensland Regional Plan’s revision will include engagement of the community.
Colin Russo
A long-term plan can’t properly underpin a vision without engaging many of Southeast Queensland’s stakeholders and visitors or without the use of appropriate futures methods.