When a city scores badly on “liveability”, it can put serious pressure on city leaders – but do these rankings really help improve life for local people?
Marine Drive in Mumbai, viewed here from across Chowpatty Beach, is an ‘accidental’ planning legacy that’s now one of the most popular places in the city.
Dirk Ott/Shutterstock
Karine Dupré, Griffith University; Jane Coulon, École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture Montpellier (ENSAM) e Silvia Tavares, James Cook University
When we plan a better future for an increasingly urbanised world, we need to be aware that more than half of all children now live in the tropics. That calls for solutions with a tropical character.
Koalas can adapt to urban areas with enough suitable green spaces but would benefit from wildlife crossing areas to reduce their risk of being hit by cars.
Julian Smith/AAP
Koalas can cope with the stresses of city life provided we plan urban developments in ways that help meet their basic needs.
Mural at Rockaway Brewing Company in Long Island City, Queens, New York, a longtime industrial and transportation hub that now is rapidly redeveloping.
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Many homes, parks and businesses in US cities stand on former manufacturing sites that may have left legacy hazardous wastes behind. A new book calls for more research into our urban industrial past.
Many tenants who lit up their apartments in the ‘We Live Here’ campaign see redevelopment of the Waterloo housing estate as a ploy to move them out of the area.
Aaron Bunch/AAP
Working-class residents of Waterloo have a history of resisting threats to their community. Many tenants see the redevelopment of public housing as state-led gentrification to squeeze them out.
A bustling local market in Kumasi, Ghana.
Adam Kohn/Flickr
The largest cities in Australia and the US are both the richest and the most likely to push out low-income earners. Having cities of all sizes will increase people’s choices of where to live and work.
More and more people are being drawn into slums in Ghana’s capital city, Accra.
Shutterstock
South Africa needs to review its four years decision to exclusively deliver housing through megaprojects.
Xiong’an represents Xi Jinping’s plan to outdo even the extraordinary rise of Shenzhen (above) from small market town to mega-city in just a few decades.
Jerome Favre/EPA/AAP
Xiong’an is called China’s No.1 urban project. Orchestrated by President Xi Jinping, the mega-city to be built just over 100 kilometres south of Beijing is also very much a political project.
Since the ceremonial entrance arches were installed in 1980, Chinatown has undergone significant redevelopment.
TonyNg/Shutterstock.com
Chinatown Haymarket has emerged as an evolving site where Asian urban modernity is introduced into Sydney.
In the 1980s, Australian geographer Maurice Daly exposed the urban planning system as a policy toolkit developers could capitalise on to drive subdivision and speculation – an insight that remains true even today.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
Essays On Air: Australia’s property boom and bust cycle stretches back to colonial days
The Conversation, CC BY58,7 MB(download)
Australia's property market is slowing and many are contemplating a possible bust. But today's episode of Essays On Air reminds us that since colonial days, Australia's property market has had its ups and downs.
In contrast to most big airports where public transport provides a large proportion of passenger access, 86% of access to Melbourne Airport is by car.
David Crosling/AAP
Good public access for Melbourne Airport and others like it depends on not fixating on one solution, like a single rail line, but instead developing multiple options integrated with the city’s needs.
At a construction site in New Delhi, workers are exposed to mosquito repellent.
Manan Vatsyayana/AFP
Olivier Telle, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)
The spread of infectious diseases such as chikungunya is closely linked to urban mobility, yet small Indian cities could play a crucial role in the resilience process.
The problem with most public housing ‘renewal’ programs is that the residents have the least say in what happens to the places they call home. The evidence of housing research is also being ignored.
Governments have started to see automation as the key to brighter urban futures. But what will this look like?
Lower Hutt, population 105,000. Debates on urbanisation are usually dominated by Auckland, but most of New Zealand’s urban population are in small and medium-size cities.
Jam74/Wikipedia
New Zealand’s coalition government plans to transition to a low-emissions economy while also addressing major urban issues such as unaffordable housing, inequality and poverty.
Small tankers unload along New York’s Newtown Creek in 2008.
Jim Henderson
Gentrification is not the only path for improving urban neighborhoods. A cleanup in Brooklyn and Queens offers another, more inclusive model that scholars have dubbed ‘just green enough.’
PhD Candidate, School of Social Sciences, University of Tasmania, and Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney