Kim Dovey, The University of Melbourne and Elek Pafka, The University of Melbourne
One person’s high density may be another’s sprawl; the same tall building may be experienced as oppressive or exhilarating; a “good crowd” for one can be “overcrowded” for another.
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.
Lorde performs at the Austin City Limits music festival.
Wikimedia Commons/Ralph Aversen
In the media, urban consolidation is often depicted as a threat to Australian suburban life. In reality, it’s a result of managed planning processes to ensure growing cities remain liveable.
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.
The Smart Cities Plan sounds good, but the proof will be in the detail – all still to be worked out.
AAP/Mal Fairclough
The discussion paper makes all the right noises, but the proof of the policy will be in the detail of partnership arrangements and implementation structures, and in how new money is used.
As machinery demolishes houses behind them, Jakarta police evict residents from the settlement of Luar Batang in April.
Reuters/Beawiharta Beawiharta
The world’s informal settlements are growing at an unprecedented rate, with about one in four urban dwellers living in slums. We need to rethink how we view and deal with these people and places.
The EVA Lanxmeer development in the Netherlands provides a model for how to incorporate green infrastructure in all aspects of the planning process.
Tony Matthews
Green infrastructure can be delivered relatively easily using existing planning processes. The main obstacle could be psychological: planners are wary of disruption to embedded practices.
Some materials and surfaces radiate much more heat (red areas) than others, as can be seen in this thermal image of Arncliffe Street in Wolli Creek, Sydney.
Hot spots occur at the scale of where people live – the building, the street, the block – which means urban design and building materials have profound implications for our health and well-being.
Melbourne is one of the fastest-growing cities in the developed world, and the other big Australian cities aren’t far behind.
AAP/David Crosling
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?
Social media is notoriously unsuitable for population studies, but these researchers have found a way to make the bias work in their favour.
When public housing like the properties in Sydney’s Millers Point is privatised, it profoundly changes the social mix of the inner city to something much more homogenous.
AAP/Newzulu/Peter Boyle
The NSW government agenda would deny the ‘right to the city’, that network of diverse communities, practices and places which give rise to the convivial and inclusive potential of cities.
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.
The new assistant minister for cities, Angus Taylor, has expressed a ‘deep belief that consultation and proper public debate gets to wise outcomes’.
flickr/Crawford Forum
Effective development planning must anticipate where growth might occur and its wider impacts. So, if the federal government is serious about cities policy, it needs a proper settlements plan.
Speaking with: Lucy Turnbull on the Greater Sydney Commission
CC BY-ND31.4 MB(download)
Dallas Rogers speaks with Lucy Turnbull about the new Greater Sydney Commission, its structure, plans and mandate, and the criticisms of what some see as a "top-down" approach to urban planning.
The shimmer of a heat mirage shows how a hard road surface increases urban temperatures by radiating heat into the air.
Wikimedia Commons/Brocken Inaglory
It seems like a ‘no brainer’ to use urban greening to help cities adapt to increasing heat, but the uptake of green infrastructure, such as trees and vegetated roofs, surfaces and walls, is slow. Why?
Mandurah is an example of built density without intensity: five-to-ten-storey buildings with generous public space but a population density less than your average suburb.
Kim Dovey
Curbing negative gearing will help get empty housing onto the market. This could go some way to bringing life back to relatively dense urban centres that are oddly lacking intensity of public life.
Flaking lead paint in a home in Muncie, Indiana.
Shelly/Flickr
How did lead poisoning become a persistent threat in U.S. cities? Lead paint and slumlords played key roles, but so did postwar housing policies that trapped minorities in crumbling inner cities.
There are always tensions, and sometimes outright hostility, between urban planners, the public and private sector developers.
AAP/Newzulu/Peter Boyle
Tensions are mounting between the professional practices of government planners, processes of public participation and the private sector’s increasing role in shaping Australian cities.