Next time you drive through a suburban street or any country town shut your eyes for a moment and try to imagine the dreams of the people who built that house. Houses are envelopes for our desires and…
In recent years, urban branding has become highly popular. Shifts in global, national, and local economic bases have forced cities and nations to market themselves internationally as cultural hotspots…
Welcome to the Future of Work, a series from The Conversation that looks at the ongoing evolution of the workplace. Today, London Metropolitan University’s Frances Holliss looks at the growth of home-based…
Earlier this month, Google released a video (see below) announcing Project Glass: the development of a pair of glasses with a real difference. Google’s augmented reality eyewear (or “eyeware”) will provide…
Following the publication of Alain de Botton’s new book Religion for Atheists, there has been a curious development: a fight between atheists. At one level the conflict looks crazy. The only condition…
Can you imagine a public transport environment free from the complications of buying a ticket and validating it? What if fare evaders were automatically singled out for their faux pas? Or how about the…
The “future” is something which manifests nowhere more potently than in our cities. Yet a substantial transformation over the past twenty years in the way cities are being made – both in terms of their…
Australia has long prided itself on being an equal society, and for most of the 20th century our housing was a mirror of that value or belief. Almost all houses were single-storey detached and, with the…
Each year for the last three years, I’ve taken a group of architecture students to Alice Springs for a 10-day urban design workshop. I first found myself in this city during Desert Mob – the annual sale…
Jason Ingham, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
February’s events in Christchurch brought people’s attention to the patently obvious: that old brick buildings collapse in large earthquakes. There is no shortage of past lessons regarding this fact…
Bashing planning has become a national sport, and in NSW, we’re the best at it. Stuck in traffic? Blame the planners. Housing stress? Planners are too slow and too stingy with land release. In the perception…