Given the challenges Australian cities face, the need for urban planning based on solid research is greater than ever. Sadly, when it comes to research funding, planning is at the back of the queue.
Much of the traffic using Sydney’s Anzac Bridge and, in the distance, Harbour Bridge is travelling through the city centre, not to it or from it.
Rob Roggema
One potential benefit of WestConnex, which remains untouched, is that it could relieve Sydney’s city centre from cars and make it more pedestrian-friendly.
All that land set aside for parking is also an opportunity to ask what the real value of parking space is.
Tequast/Wikimedia Commons
Looking back through all Melbourne’s strategic plans from 1929 onwards, it becomes clear that the 20th-century legacy of car-centric planning and its focus on parking is still deeply entrenched.
Sydney’s west is growing at a staggering pace.
Reuters
The future of Sydney is under constant scrutiny. But before we consider creating a ‘third city’ in Sydney’s west, we should ensure we get the current infrastructure up to international standards.
An artist’s depiction of the new Apple store proposed for Federation Square.
Daniel Andrews
The State of Australian Cities Conference begins in Adelaide today. In major cities across the nation, there’s a stark contrast between lofty planning goals and the sprawling reality on the ground.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff launch Sidewalk Toronto, a high-tech urban development project.
Mark Blinch/Reuters
Toronto has entered a joint venture with a Google sister company to create a high-tech urban development area. The goal is to ‘re-imagine cities from the internet up’ – Google’s internet, of course.
Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, Iceland.
David Phan/flickr
Digital media on building facades are changing the appearance of our cities. This creates a need for new urban policy guidelines to retain architectural quality and promote social engagement.
The first autonomous vehicles are already upon us, but once their use becomes widespread they will change cities as surely as the original cars did.
AAP/nuTonomy
It’s clear autonomous vehicles will disrupt our cities, their land use and planning. Whether they make urban life better or worse depends on how well we anticipate and adapt to their impacts.
The city of Vancouver is set among a beautiful background, but the scenic wonder masks other problems.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
Vancouver may be one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but the president of Emily Carr University says the city could benefit from the discipline of design.
Perth has long had many fine parks but is losing vegetation cover in a band of increasingly dense development across the city.
Ruben Schade/flickr
A new study shows major Australian cities are suffering an overall loss of green space –
although some areas are doing better than others.
An outstanding example of sustainable residential building, Breathe Architecture’s The Commons apartments in Melbourne won a 2014 National Architecture Award.
Image courtesy of Australian Institute of Architects
New South Wales is the only state that has made meaningful progress on legislation and enforcement of standards capable of creating a sustainable built environment.
A tiny house in the backyard appeals to some as a solution that offers both affordability and sustainability.
Think Out Loud/flick
New research has found a marked increase in people, particularly among women over 50, who are building or want to build a tiny house. However, inflexible planning rules often stand in their way.
So much for context – authorities are allowing large out-of-place buildings in the higher-density retrofitting push.
Linley Lutton
Planners wish to correct past errors by increasing densities, discouraging car dependency and mixing land uses. But imposing imported strategies on Australian cities is producing unhappy results.
At first glance, old industrial sites, like this one in Carrington Street, don’t look like much. But they provide vital spaces for creative precincts to flourish.
Paul Jones
A new project documents who uses urban industrial lands slated for redevelopment. It reveals a vibrant but largely hidden sector at the interface between creative industries and small manufacturing.
Generic plotting of ‘green space’ on an urban plan does not target mental wellbeing unless it is designed to engage us with the sights, sounds and smells of nature.
Zoe Myers
Successful parks and urban green spaces encourage us to linger, to rest, to walk for longer. That, in turn, provides the time to maximise the restorative mental benefits.
Much of what is being built is straightforward ‘investor grade product’ – flats built to attract the burgeoning investment market.
Bill Randolph
The inexorable logic of the market will create suburban concentrations of lower-income households on a scale hitherto only experienced in the legacy inner-city high-rise public housing estates.
Higher-density developments change neighbourhoods, often in ways that further disadvantage low-income households.
Laura Crommelin
For the first time in Australia, more higher-density housing than detached housing was being built last year. Compact cities have pros and cons, but the downsides fall more heavily on the poor.
When disputes and other problems of apartment living arise, low-income households’ options are often limited.
Hazel Easthope
In the push for more compact cities, don’t forget the ways apartment living is different. And often the downsides of these differences weigh heavily on low-income and disadvantaged households.