Qantas’s new non-stop route from Perth to London might be a watershed for travel times between Australia and Europe. But super-long-haul routes won’t do much to cut aviation’s greenhouse emissions.
Regulating for live/work spaces in San Francisco has enabled many new housing types to develop.
Andréanne Doyon
Changes in how we live and work call into question current planning regulations relating to mixed-use development.
A quirk in the planning rules enabled the Primaries Warehouse in Fremantle to be redeveloped as a model of progressive higher-density design.
Stuart Smith/Panoramio
Exceptional projects can emerge when regulations are sensibly relaxed due to context. A Fremantle project is a model of progressive higher-density possibilities resulting from flexible planning rules.
Officer Woods’ competition entry shows how the wasted spaces of suburban road verges and front yards could be put to much better uses.
Officer Woods
The front yards, footpaths and verges of Australian suburbs are spaces overdue for reinvention.
At Tolhuistuin, the government provides the land, old building stock and a maintenance budget for a fixed period while the creatives develop the precinct themselves.
Maurice Mikkers/flickr
When municipal or state governments join forces with smaller creative communities to shape urban regeneration the results can be far-reaching.
The closure of the Myer store would once have been a crippling blow for Fremantle, but now it is a site of new activity and possibilities.
City of Fremantle
The rise in temporary use of urban space requires a looser planning vision that can draw on this new type of city-making to inform longer-term developments.
The continued preference for detached housing in new suburbs is driving Perth’s urban sprawl and means two-thirds of dwellings built over the next 15 years need to be on infill sites to meet the state’s target.
perthhdproductions/flickr
Government and industry need to demonstrate the benefits of well-designed higher-density housing. Rich residential display projects may be the ideal catalyst for creating smarter cities.
Suburban expansion on Perth’s fringe pushes into the SouthWest Ecoregion.
Richard Weller/Donna Broun
If Perth can preserve the rich biodiversity of its setting, it will become a model for sustainable city development that fully connects with the value of natural ecosystem services.
Banksia woodlands are home to thousands of plant species.
Rob Davis
The Banksia woodlands of the Swan Coastal Plain are home to thousands of species, many unique. But they are gradually being swallowed by Perth, one of the world’s most sprawling cities.
The Green Growth Plan for Perth represents the first strategic environmental assessment of a whole city in Australia.
Richard Wainwright/AAP
With a strategic plan adopted, it not only shows where development should be avoided but clears the way for development in other areas. So Perth needs to get it right.
Clinging on: Carnaby’s black cockatoo has already lost much of its habitat.
Georgina Steytler
Plans for managing Perth’s rapid urban growth have been touted as green. But they still look like robbing the iconic Carnaby’s black cockatoo of yet more crucial habitat.
The urban landscape is complex and ever-changing in cities such as Perth, but digital aerial photography can now monitor even the smallest changes.
Wikimedia Commons
Constant, complex changes in cities and mine sites are hard to monitor. Drawing on digital aerial photography, it’s now possible to track land-use and vegetation changes in areas as small as 10-20cm.
The way forward? Light rail helps urban development far more than roads do - the challenge is how to pay for it.
AAP Image/Dave Hunt
Light rail is good for cities, but it’s also expensive, which is why many Australian cities have opted for buses instead. But there is a way to get top-drawer public transport using private dollars.
A new research expedition is documenting the deep-sea denizens of the Perth Canyon, such as this flytrap anemone and basket star.
UWA/Schmidt Ocean Institute
The Perth Canyon, off Australia’s west coast, is twice the size of the Grand Canyon. But only now, with the help of remote-controlled submarines, are researchers finding out what lives in its depths.
Hefty problem: a local council was left with a huge clean-up bill after a dead whale washed up in Perth last year.
AAP Image/City of Stirling
Dead whales can cost beachside ratepayers a lot to clean up. The alternative is to tow them away before they wash up - but the legal question of who does the job is far more complex than it sounds.
It’s all fun and games until someone loses a motza.
Jarrad Seng/Sydney Festival
Perth’s Fringe World 2015 is currently sauntering through the Western Australian capital. Featuring more than 2,000 performers, the annual festival has perfected a blend of cabaret, circus, theatre, film…
Wind and humidity affect how easy it is to cool off in a heatwave. Big swimming pools help, too.
AAP Image/Dan Peled
Several Australian cities, such as Adelaide and Perth, have greeted 2015 with scorching weather as summer hits its stride – the kind of conditions that leave us crying out for an air conditioner, rather…
The AAL Fremantle, borne along by a meteotsunami, hits the rail bridge next to Fremantle Harbour.
@Mattiegeesu via Twitter
At around 10pm on Sunday 17 August 2014, the container ship AAL Fremantle was being unloaded after arriving in Western Australia’s Fremantle Harbour, when it broke away from its mooring and collided with…
The once-popular Loch McNess north of Perth has dried up almost completely after a decades-long dry period.
ron_n_beth/Flickr
Since 1970, average rainfall in the south-west of Western Australia has decreased by nearly a fifth, and the science suggests that this is linked to human-caused climate change. Across Australia, CSIRO…
Interim Director, UWA Public Policy Institute; Associate Professor & Programme Co-ordinator (Masters of Public Policy), The University of Western Australia