New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority was hit hard by a 79% ridership reduction during the pandemic. It needs an extra $8 billion through 2024 to avoid service cuts and layoffs.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Transit agencies could use the money to buy new subway cars, buses and maintain rails. The funding is designed to build on last year’s emergency aid, which kept transit operating through the pandemic.
Prodded by Michelle Obama and other government leaders, Walmart and other major US retailers vowed to build hundreds of stores in food deserts. What happened?
Torre Glòries in Barcelona is an obvious example of statement architecture, but much of the gender bias built into cities is more insidious and pervasive.
Wikimedia Commons
Women encounter many difficulties in cities that are products of male design and planning. We need to move past the practice of one group shaping our world on behalf of everyone else.
Artificial islands can cause huge environmental issues for coastlines.
The Forest City Project
Artificial islands that are now mushrooming across the ocean are regarded as ‘engineering marvels’. But, little attention is paid to how these human-made structures affect sea life.
The evidence that living near exhaust stacks from busy tunnels harms your lungs is far from settled.
from www.shutterstock.com
As the latest controversy about tunnel exhaust stacks and respiratory health plays out in the media, some community members are proposing solutions that just don’t make sense.
Planning policies in many cities advocate higher-density housing for reasons of sustainability and efficiency.
Dan Peled/AAP
Ambience is a result of a whole range of processes and physical objects. We can use a systems approach to examine and describe what needs to be done to achieve such a subjective quality in a street.
Schoolchildren play on a New York subway.
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Nine out of 10 rural places experienced increases in diversity from 1990 to 2010. Data show a more diverse future is guaranteed across all of America, and there’s no going back.
The closure of the Myer store would once have been a crippling blow for Fremantle, but now it is a site of new activity and possibilities.
City of Fremantle
The rise in temporary use of urban space requires a looser planning vision that can draw on this new type of city-making to inform longer-term developments.
Koala numbers are in decline through increased urbanisation, but they can find a safe passage if one’s provided.
Shutterstock/dirkr
Koala numbers in parts of Australia are in decline as they move from development of their land. But they can learn to take safer routes if they are built as part of the urban design.
Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is one of the fastest-growing cities in the world despite its ranking as one of the ‘least liveable’.
mariusz kluzniak/flickr
Bringing significant benefits to an emergent middle class, Dhaka’s cultural, economic, environmental and political landscapes are being rapidly but unevenly transformed.
Much of the ‘smart cities’ rhetoric is dominated by the economic, with little reference to the natural world and its plight.
Ase from www.shutterstock.com
The rhetoric of ‘smart cities’ is dominated by the economic, with little reference to the natural world and its plight. Truly smart and resilient cities need to be more in tune with the planet.
City residents are embracing the bike as the fastest, most convenient transport in areas like Brunswick, yet an apartment building has been blocked for not providing car parking.
flickr/Takver
It’s up to state governments to ensure urban planning rules properly reflect both the desires of residents in the 21st century and the principles of sustainability.
Want to be happy? It’s all about the green.
epSos.de/Flickr
Spending time with nature in our cities’ parks and gardens can improve individual satisfaction in life and make us less aggressive, anxious and stressed. So isn’t it time we placed access to nature alongside…
Where you live can reveal a lot about your political preferences and socio-economic grouping.
AAP/David Crosling
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) recently released a new round of data based on the 2011 census. One part of this latest release that has caught the eye of the media is the 2011 Socio-Economic…
Facing tough questions: NSW’s planning review must grapple with competing visions of development.
Flickr/Askew One
Later this year Brad Hazzard, NSW Minister for Planning and Infrastructure, faces a difficult decision. Will he prepare new state planning legislation that prioritises a desired outcome: healthy, functional…
University Lecturer in Biogeography and Biodiversity; Academic Director of Oxford's MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management, University of Oxford