A local council goes for hydrogen. A state government goes for lithium and mirrors. They are taking punts on technology. What are the risks?
While state investment decreases on average with distance from the CBD, Melbourne’s neediest suburbs aren’t forgotten.
ymgerman from www.shutterstock.com
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.
Melbourne, city of cranes.
Image from www.shutterstock.com
Melbourne has seen tens of thousands of new apartments constructed over recent years, and apartment brands are flourishing. We can see striking typographic similarities with another economic frenzy: the 1870s cattle boom.
Forty years on, there is still resistance to mixing with the ‘sort of people’ who were segregated in social housing tower blocks.
David Jackmanson/flickr
Even where communities are mixed, many inner-city families go to extraordinary financial and geographic lengths to ensure their children do not go to school with children from ‘the flats’.
Tokyo, seen here from the Skytree tower, is home to more people than any other city on Earth but has managed to remain highly liveable.
Brendan Barrett
From Cate Blanchett to David Williamson, some of Australia’s most well known theatre artists have performed at La Mama, which celebrates its 50th birthday this year.
An artist’s impression of the new river crossing to be built as part of the West Gate Tunnel project.
Western Distributor Authority
Melbourne’s proposed road project relies on assumptions that inflate estimates of the traffic the new link will carry – but other choices about the future of transport are open to us.
The region with the most unequal incomes in Australia is Melbourne City, where the top 20% have an income that is 8.3 times as high as those in the bottom 20%.
Dan Peled/AAP
Census data shows there is income inequality between, but also within, regions of Australia.
Malcolm Turnbull has made clear his apparent enthusiasm for a rail line to Melbourne Airport – with or without state government support.
AAP/Julian Smith
A rail link is a big step towards transforming transport access and land use in ways that will enable a much bigger city to remain liveable. And Melbourne can learn from Sydney about this.
Gold Rush garbage.
S.Hayes. Artefact is part of Heritage Victoria's collection.
What we buy has defined who we are since the Gold Rush. In the 1850s and 1860s, people communicated their social status by buying stuff - dinner sets, junk jewellery - and throwing their old things away.
The secure private garden on the redeveloped Carlton estate.
Kate Shaw
Why can’t the state fund an ongoing program of upgrading, replacing and building public housing? On the evidence to date, private developers aren’t doing a better job of it.
The closure of the Gatwick Hotel means those most in need of shelter have lost another place they could stay.
Darkydoors from www.shutterstock.com
When wealth accumulation becomes the driver of urban regeneration, residents who already have little or no say in the future of our cities are further marginalised by gentrification.
Melbourne’s Hosier Lane: some see it as art, others think it’s vandalism.
Bernard Spragg/Flickr
Melbourne’s street art has an international reputation and may be a very valuable tourist attraction. But the city remains ambivalent about the activities that have created its ‘laneway galleries’.
People look out over an ornamental lake from behind a wrought iron fence at the Carlton Gardens.
State Library of Victoria
Melbourne is a product of British colonial planning policies to control public access and movement in Australian cities. This legacy still influences the use of public spaces today.
Even though Sydney’s population growth (at 14%) is below the average across all capital cities, its housing supply failed to match this growth.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
Data on housing supply in Australia’s capital shows that while it’s increasing in areas with lots of jobs, house prices are too high for those who might want to move for work.
Melbourne’s Flinders Street station is transformed into a stage for the 2013 White Night.
Gav Owen/Flickr
Melbourne may be the self-proclaimed music capital of Australia, but industry data suggests Sydney may have the upper hand. Meanwhile the UN recognises Adelaide as the country’s only city of music.
Must we become passive observers to the destruction of one of Melbourne’s most culturally diverse and socially rich suburbs?
Not only has income inequality in Australia grown over the past two decades, rich and poor are also more segregated in terms of where they live in the big cities.
If a second airport creates another centre of activity in western Sydney, then it won’t just be air travellers who benefit.
Stilgherrian/flickr
Our big cities increase incomes faster than population growth, but most residents miss out on the extra income growth. Creating multiple centres of activity may help make bigger better for everyone.