We rarely see residents of a city successfully push back in defence of their needs against the power of finance capital, which seeks to make money from the city. But Barcelona shows it can be done.
Residents of established middle suburbs are slowly coming round to the idea, but governments and the property sector lack the capacity to deliver compact cities that are acceptable to the community.
Christo Venter, University of Pretoria and Gary Hayes, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
South Africa needs to review its approach to rolling out Bus Rapid Transit systems as the current model is proving to be too expensive and unsustainable.
City living costs are driving people to organise themselves to share a room with strangers. These precarious living arrangements hardly qualify as a home.
Unaffordable housing and homelessness are burning issues. Policymaking has suffered from a critical lack of data and expert input since the National Housing Supply Council was axed in 2013.
Durban one of South Africa’s third largest cities, by population has reported that the number of people living in informal dwellings has remained stubbornly high.
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.
About 10% of empty dwellings on census night – 1.2% of all housing – were available for rental and vacancy rates have changed little in 35 years. Could governments be overreacting?
The egalitarian myth behind the great Australian dream of home ownership is at odds with the first rules of land granting in the colonies. Even then, property ownership depended on wealth and status.
The NDIS has the resources and mandate to develop a mature market that delivers suitable housing for people with high disability needs, including the more than 6,200 young people now in aged care.
Residents of two high-rise public housing blocks are being given ‘mood lights’ to express how they feel based on their experience of the process of redeveloping their neighbourhood.
The idea of a hot and sunny land is so baked into our thinking about Australia that we’ve failed to design and build houses that protect us from the cold.
Between 1982 and 2013, the share of home owners among 25-34 year olds shrunk, by more than 20%. On the other hand, the share of home owners among those aged 65+ years has risen slightly.
A modest rebalancing of federal tax policy toward build-to-rent housing could fill affordable housing funding gaps. Australian funds are already investing in such a scheme in the US.
Professor; School of Economics, Finance and Property, and Director, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Curtin Research Centre, Curtin University
Professor of Social Epidemiology and Director of the Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne