Welcome to In Conversation; an ongoing series in which leading academics interview prominent public figures. In today’s instalment, Dr Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University, sits…
How dense could we be? Very, if you follow much of the commentary in Australian debates about the way we should plan our cities. High-rise residential developments have been springing up in all Australia’s…
South-east Queensland now has a 200km long city.
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Despite the emphasis in Australia on the “compact city” foreshadowed in every major strategic metropolitan plan such as the South East Queensland Regional Plan; there is a growing trend towards “colliding…
The ABC documentary Wide Open Road is a totally fascinating history of the car in Australia. The characters who pioneered the car in the Australian bush 100 years ago are remarkable. The images of Australian…
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The Occupy Wall Street protests that started in New York have proved contagious. Sit-ins and attempted occupations have spread to other major American cities including Chicago, Boston, Seattle, and Atlanta…
How do you improve road safety? Simple: make it riskier.
La Citta Vita
In August, Liberal MP Peter Phelps delivered a passionate rant in the NSW Upper House in which he called traffic lights a “Bolshevist menace”. He argued that traffic lights are on par with state repression…
Cycling for transport in Australia is characterised by several “missing” population groups: women, children, adolescents and older adults. Women comprise about one-fifth of commuter cyclists in Australia…
A new generation of architects is needed to build our cities.
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The “future” is something which manifests nowhere more potently than in our cities. Yet a substantial transformation over the past twenty years in the way cities are being made – both in terms of their…
The rate at which sea levels are rising can change depending on when or where the measurements were taken, scientists say.
Flickr/Brentbat
Global average sea levels continue to rise but readings vary greatly depending on when and where they are taken, a leading expert on coastal impacts of climate change has said, warning that selective sea…
Counterintuitively, the carbon tax may make it harder to get a bus.
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Transport accounts for 14% of Australia’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and has one of the fastest emission growth rates. Cutting our national emissions might, therefore, be expected to shine a blowtorch…
Australians over-consume water, energy and space.
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In recent weeks, two major federal government strategy papers have been released: Our Cities, Our Future: A National Urban Policy for a Productive, Sustainable and Liveable Future and Sustainable Australia…
Why shouldn’t our public spaces be productive?
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Food. It is the great unifier of place and race, the common ground sustaining our very existence. Why then, does food production feature so minimally in public space and urban design? Under the weight…
In the degreasing after the 2011 New South Wales election a lot was made of the supposed influence of western Sydney voters, their electoral motivations and allegiances. Western Sydney surely has its problems…
Australian cities have a long history of living up close.
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This will be the century of urbanisation, when seven billion of almost 10 billion people will live in urban settlements. In Australia our urban sprawl is consuming land at a per capita rate that few countries…
Living large down under - Australians love big houses.
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Australia has long prided itself on being an equal society, and for most of the 20th century our housing was a mirror of that value or belief. Almost all houses were single-storey detached and, with the…