Community proposals for public swimming pools are popping up all over the country. But individuals need to work with governments to ensure these projects actually get off the ground.
Planning and design for healthy, liveable communities in the Australian tropics can involve quite different considerations from those that apply down south.
Silvia Tavares
There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all plan for sustainable, healthy urban living. Urban diaries help identify what works – and doesn’t work – for tropical cities like Cairns or Townsville.
A retail street in Facebook’s proposed Willow Campus.
Facebook
Facebook will build a village with housing and amenities in Silicon Valley, a new version of old, unsuccessful ideas of company towns and utopian communities. Will Facebook’s town face the same fate?
A car is set alight during the 2005 riots that prompted soul-searching in France about segregated and badly designed housing projects.
A.J./Wikimedia
Planning matters. The 2005 riots in France started in badly designed housing projects, while innovative planning helped Medellín, Colombia, shed its reputation as the most violent city in the world.
A still from Daniel Crooks’ High Street (After Ruscha) 2017. Single channel video, 2:1, 4K, stereo, 17 minutes 52 seconds.
Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery.
While planning policies and practices have contributed to marginalising Indigenous people, planners can now work with them to ensure they have their rightful say in shaping Australian communities.
Firefighters didn’t expect to find hundreds of homeless families squatting in a São Paulo building that caught fire.
REUTERS/Leonardo Benassatto
Hundreds of squatters were living in a vacant police station in São Paulo when fire broke out on May 1, killing up to four people. The residents were part of Brazil’s nationwide homeless movement.
The queen opens Expo 88, a hastily conceived event that has had a lasting impact on Brisbane.
Queensland State Archives/Flickr
Theodore Endreny, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
In an increasingly urban world, trees can make a major difference. One study found that, for every dollar invested in planting, megacities saw a $2.50 return on their investment.
Originating in the Netherlands, the concept of ‘woonerfs’, areas designed to invite walking, playing, socialising and cycling while curbing motor vehicles, has spread to cities in other countries, including Berlin.
Eric Sehr/Flickr
All around us, the places we inhabit send us physical and visual cues that influence our behaviour. Good design can tilt the balance so our surroundings help us act in ways that fulfil our needs.
Riot police drill outside Saint Petersburg’s new soccer stadium ahead of the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky
After a series of debacles, many metropolitan areas no longer want their leaders to vie for these opportunities.
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.
Dozens of US cities have launched bike-share programs in the past decade. There have been bumps – critics want wider access, and cities want bikes stored out of the way – but bike sharing is on a roll.
Torre Glòries in Barcelona is an obvious example of statement architecture, but much of the gender bias built into cities is more insidious and pervasive.
Wikimedia Commons
Women encounter many difficulties in cities that are products of male design and planning. We need to move past the practice of one group shaping our world on behalf of everyone else.
A mother and daughter stroll through a Johannesburg suburb.
Shutterstock/Richard van der Spuy
Electric cars might be a quick fix to clean up transport, but the problems with cars go beyond just emissions.
Health objectives are at last being integrated into all levels of planning in New South Wales, from cities and towns to local places and buildings.
pisaphotography/Shutterstock
The connections between city planning and health are many and varied, but getting health objectives integrated into all aspects of planning in New South Wales has been a long struggle.
We’re used to hearing cries of “NIMBYism” and “money-hungry developers” on both sides of planning debates, but there’s actually more subtlety to interactions around urban planning that are worth exploring and understanding.
Joel Carrett/AAP
Speaking with: Cameron McAuliffe on NIMBYs, urban planning and making community consultation work
Dallas Rogers speaks with Western Sydney University's Cameron McAuliffe about leveraging conflict and informal processes in the urban planning process.
Jason Eichenholz, co-founder and chief technology officer of driverless vehicle industry startup Luminar Technologies.
AP Photo/Ben Margot