While state and territory leaders will be partners, Malcolm Turnbull’s government intends to be the driver of a national policy for Australia’s cities.
AAP/Lukas Coch
The Turnbull government’s cities policy is the latest incarnation of ‘the-Commonwealth-knows-best’ approach, with little regard for whether urban issues are best resolved at the metropolitan level.
Using incentives drawn from game play, the peak-hour crush can be reduced, or avoided altogether.
Stilgherrian/flickr
Using elements of game play, we can create incentives for people to change how and when they make various transport choices in ways that enable the whole system to work better.
Many things go into making a healthy community, so the earlier services and infrastructure become available, the better.
Cecily Maller
Early residents in new communities are known as ‘pioneers’ – they arrive before many services are in place. A five-year study points to the many benefits of putting in good services early on.
The budget doesn’t provide either the infrastructure investment or financing details needed to flesh out the Smart Cities Plan.
AAP/Mal Fairclough
The budget paints a picture of higher debt, little relief for growing cities crying out for infrastructure investment, and no detail of how City Deals might work to fix this.
It’s become conventional wisdom that Australia has an infrastructure deficit – with remarkably little discussion of what that even means.
AAP Image/Dave Hunt
With the failures of past planning now apparent, the unruly threat of a damaged and depleting planet is ushering us toward a fourth era of urban restructuring. What might City v4.0 look like?
Malcolm Turnbull is known to favour public transport, but he also sees the need to twin the development of higher-density activity centres with rail infrastructure.
AAP/Dan Himbrechts
The ‘30-minute city’ goal is about more than urban rail and other transit projects. It means transforming our cities into centres of activity where work, study and services are all close by.
What do U.S. mayors worry about? A recent survey finds that aging infrastructure is a top concern – and many mayors say state and federal agencies hinder their efforts instead of helping.
The report criticises the state’s failure to adequately integrate the planning of land use development and transport priorities, but falls into the same trap itself.
AAP/Melanie Foster
Infrastructure Australia’s latest report is substantial but, critically, it fails to incorporate the transport thinking needed to develop more compact cities that work better for everyone.
A community-led advocacy campaign helped steer the Victorian government away from building the East West Link.
AAP/Julian Smith
Communities want urban policy to deliver the right projects at the right time in the right place. Governments should embrace local citizens and interest groups as key players in crafting such policy.
Green space and infrastructure are consistently high on the public’s list of priorities, but urban planning has struggled to incorporate their value.
Wang Song/from www.shutterstock.com
When communities are surveyed, green infrastructure is usually high on their list of urban planning priorities. But until now planners have lacked tools to quantify the long-term benefits.
Minneapolis learned the tragic consequences of crumbling infrastructure in 2007.
Reuters
The Turnbull government seems to have lifted Abbott’s moratorium on rail funding, but giving light rail to every city that wants it will take some clever strategies to woo private investors.
Developers levied by local governments to provide essential infrastructure over-inflate that cost when passing it onto buyers.
AAP/Paul Miller
Developers are inflating the infrastructure charges levied upon them by as much as 400% - and all buyers end up paying.
The Kariba dam on the Zambezi River produces most of the electricity used in Zimbabwe and Zambia, supports extensive fishing and tourism industries and protects hundreds of thousands of people from floods.
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Nobel Laureates met recently in Hong Kong to sign a memorandum calling for cities to help guard against climate change. As the most creative places on the planet, big cities are the perfect place to meet this challenge.