The scene of the fatal crash at Essendon Airport, where authorities allowed extensive development between the runways and surrounding housing.
Joe Castro/AAP
Airport operators enjoy the privileged position in Australian planning law of being able to decide their own futures. Their exemption from state planning rules threatens orderly planning and safety.
Fencing goes up along the route of the Roe 8 highway construction project in Perth.
Richard Wainwright/AAP
Think you couldn’t possibly do without your car? There are more options than you might think.
This transit-oriented development in Oakland, California, combines residential housing with easy access to local transport options and amenities.
Eric Fredericks/flickr
A combination of transit-oriented centres, inclusionary zoning and a special rate on land instead of stamp duty could make housing more affordable by cutting congestion, development and travel costs.
Most of the major cemeteries in Australian cities, including Sydney’s Waverley Cemetery, date back to the 1800s.
Kate Ryan
Most big city cemeteries in Australia date back to the 1800s, so we need to consider our burial options before we reach the point when the number of deaths exceeds the available cemetery plots.
With the addition of minarets, Hagia Sophia was converted from a Christian basilica to an Islamic mosque.
Candace Richards
Adaptive reuse and recycling of heritage architecture may be all the rage, but are not new. Making new buildings from old has a long history in the ancient world.
Native plants don’t need much space really.
Simon Pawley/Sustainable Outdoors
Lizzy Lowe, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau and Margaret Stanley, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
It is possible to use small spaces such as transport corridors, verges and the edges of sporting grounds for native wildlife habitat restoration, helping to bring biodiversity back into cities.
The Turnbull government’s focus seems to be largely on infrastructure projects that drive economic growth.
AAP/Lukas Coch
One year on, the Turnbull government is touting the economic benefits of an infrastructure agenda that neglects the other important functions of transport projects.
The rapid growth of Melbourne is threatening the very liveability that makes it attractive to so many people.
Francisco Anzola/flickr
The increasing global focus on essential services and public space as a key combination for successful city-making is relevant to fast-growing Australian cities too.
In many cities, the only direction to go is up.
'Skyscrapers' via www.shutterstock.com
George Washington had Mount Vernon. Thomas Jefferson had Monticello. Now Trump has his eponymous tower. Can it stimulate a more creative, sustainable approach to building skyscrapers?
The draft regional plan, ShapingSEQ, released by Queensland Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, has been influenced by ‘stakeholders’ rather than representative community input.
Twitter
The draft plan for Southeast Queensland largely takes a ‘provide land for the predicted demand’ approach, which assumes regional planning is a type of technical process best left to the experts.
Geelong is working on a long-term vision to ensure a bright new day dawns for the city.
Colin Russo
Greater Geelong’s ‘Our Future’ is a process of involving industry professionals and the community in the development of a long-term vision for Victoria’s second-biggest city.
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.
Apartment layouts at Ritter Strasse 50, initiated by ifau and Jesko Fezer with Heide and Von Beckerath, are highly individualised.
Andrea Kroth
Kim Dovey, The University of Melbourne and Elek Pafka, The University of Melbourne
We’re still in the early days of understanding how cities work. But we do know that creative, healthy and productive cities have certain things in common – and it’s all to do with their ‘urban DMA’.
Connecting cities should serve all citizens, not just a few.
Illustration via shutterstock.com
Design will make the difference between smart city projects offering great promise or actually reinforcing or even widening the existing gaps in unequal ways their cities serve residents.
Upper Coomera is one of those fast-growing fringe suburbs that are hotter because of tightly packed housing with less greenery.
Daryl Jones/www.ozaerial.com.au/
Recently published research has found that the concentration of poorer people in hotter places is a real problem for cities’ capacity to cope with climate change.
The Tent Embassy in Canberra has for decades been symbolic of the tensions in Australian cities about recognition, reconciliation and land justice.
Dylan Wood/AAP