The combination of higher-density living and increasing cultural diversity means we need to think about how to build social cohesion and make the most of the opportunities of apartment living.
The big global cities might be engines of growth but are also where the deepest troughs of poverty and injustice are found.
Jorge CMS/Shutterstock
The largest cities in Australia and the US are both the richest and the most likely to push out low-income earners. Having cities of all sizes will increase people’s choices of where to live and work.
As much as stores would love to be able to get shoppers to go along every aisle, only 2% do.
Sam Mooy/AAP
Marketers once liked to think they could virtually steer people through shops and malls. But it appears shoppers’ movements, possibly driven by primal instincts, aren’t so easily directed.
Through the NDIS, Kirby Littlely has been able to leave the nursing home where she stayed after a series of strokes.
NDIS/Summer Foundation
The NDIS has started to reduce the admissions of young people with disabilities to aged care facilities, but more than 6,000 are still waiting for more suitable accommodation.
When cars, trucks, bikes and pedestrians come together at an intersection, design makes the difference between collisions and safety.
pxhere
Paul Salmon, University of the Sunshine Coast dan Gemma Read, University of the Sunshine Coast
Collisions at intersections between motor vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians cause many deaths and injuries. Design that considers how each group approaches intersections improves everyone’s safety.
Ant colonies direct traffic flows of millions of individuals along the best routes – army ants even manage inbound and outbound lanes – but how?
Geoff Gallice/Wikimedia
Insects aren’t known for having big brains, and slime moulds and fungi don’t have any. So how do they solve challenges that test the ingenuity of human transport engineers?
Businesses are weighing up the costs of queuing and using innovative ways to do away with queues, or at least make the perceptions of waiting less painful.
Michal Parzuchowski/Unsplash
Businesses are weighing up the costs of queuing and using innovative ways to minimise these costs by doing away with queues.
Cities are growing vertically as well as horizontally, so infrastructure needs to ensure people can move up and down as well as across the city.
Alpha/Flickr
Cities are expanding upwards and downwards, as well as outwards. With urban density also increasing, moving people efficiently around the city, often using ageing infrastructure, is quite a challenge.
A house at Little Paradise on Groote Eylandt, East Arnhem Land.
Kieran Wong
To deliver better housing for health, we must go back to what we know works, to the proven evidence-based solutions for design, construction, delivery and maintenance.
A public barbecue in Lyndhurst, New South Wales, does the job but could be so much better.
Mattinbgn/Wikimedia
The need for public cooking facilities has long been recognised, but why has the basic public barbecue failed to evolve along with Australians, their lifestyles and the foods they eat?
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.
Xiong’an represents Xi Jinping’s plan to outdo even the extraordinary rise of Shenzhen (above) from small market town to mega-city in just a few decades.
Jerome Favre/EPA/AAP
Xiong’an is called China’s No.1 urban project. Orchestrated by President Xi Jinping, the mega-city to be built just over 100 kilometres south of Beijing is also very much a political project.
Housing is just one of the essentials in household budgets and it’s when there’s no way to manage all these costs that financial stress really sets in.
Emma Baker
Housing affordability is one of Australia’s great unsolved problems. Some households can make adjustments to cover high housing costs, but the ones deprived of essentials are under real stress.
People are alarmed about Airbnb’s impacts, but these are far from uniform across the city.
Justin Lane/EPA
The patterns of Airbnb listings in Australia’s biggest cities suggest impacts on rental housing are likely to be biggest in high-end areas that appeal to tourists. Low-income areas are less affected.
A storm caused flooding in the CBD as it swept through Hobart.
Patrick Gee/The Mercury. Used with permission
Managing flood risk is not just ‘good planning’; it requires commitment to resilient cities by land developers, politicians and communities. Effective response means learning from mistakes.
You can see koalas at Dreamworld on the Gold Coast, but the city council has won a planning battle to preserve their wild population too.
Dave Hunt/AAP
Local planning rules have prevailed in a long-running dispute over a proposed Gold Coast quarry that threatened the amenity of nearby residents and koalas.
Governments have all but abandoned the commitments made a decade ago when Kevin Rudd launched a national campaign to reduce homelessness.
Dean Lewins/AAP
A decade after the launch of a national campaign against homelessness, the trends are all going the wrong way. A new annual report highlights what’s gone wrong and what must be done.
Victoria has led the way in upgrading intercity rail services with medium-speed VLocity trains that have a cruising speed of 160km/h.
Joe Castro/AAP
High-speed rail for Australia has been on the drawing boards since the mid-1980s but has come to nothing. Three states are developing medium-speed rail with federal funding, but NSW is missing out.
Since the ceremonial entrance arches were installed in 1980, Chinatown has undergone significant redevelopment.
TonyNg/Shutterstock.com
Chinatown Haymarket has emerged as an evolving site where Asian urban modernity is introduced into Sydney.
Have Australian commuters really enjoyed gains in quality of life that would justify all those billions of dollars spent on transport infrastructure?
Hayk Shalunts/Shutterstock