Developers will now be responsible for dealing with noise issues from nearby music venues – but it will take real community activism to prevent closures.
City residents all around the world are getting together to create housing tailored to their needs and budgets, instead of being developed for maximum profit.
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.
A massive residential development in a flood-prone inner-city suburb sounds like a recipe for disaster. But good urban design can deliver higher density and reduce the flood risk.
Junfeng Jiao, The University of Texas at Austin; Juan Miró, The University of Texas at Austin, and Nicole McGrath, The University of Texas at Austin
Millions of Americans rely on public transit to get to school, work or stores, but many can’t get the service they need. ‘Uberizing’ transit by offering more options on demand could fill the gaps.
The media and policymakers often say a ‘perfect storm’ of environmental factors cause wildfires but that ignores the role of irresponsible urban planning and development in raising fire risks.
Traditionally, new communities first get hard infrastructure – schools, hospitals, transport – and ‘soft’ social infrastructure comes later. Liveability and public health suffer as a result.
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.
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.
As Hurricane Harvey shows, flooding can happen wherever large storms stall and dumps lots of rain. A new study finds that development is increasing in flood zones inland, where people may not think they are at risk.
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.
Many new housing developments are being built along busy roads and rail lines, but lack design features that would reduce occupants’ exposure to harmful traffic pollution.
Cleaning up and reusing contaminated sites, known as brownfields, can create jobs and promote economic growth. But it also can drive gentrification that prices out low-income residents.
More than 50 million birds, mammals and reptiles are thought to be killed each year in New South Wales and Queensland by the removal of native vegetation, and planning laws are failing to protect them.
A rail link is a big step towards transforming transport access and land use in ways that will enable a much bigger city to remain liveable. And Melbourne can learn from Sydney about this.
PhD Candidate, School of Social Sciences, University of Tasmania, and Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney