Australians are losing the backyards that once served as retreats from the stresses of city living. Our health is likely to suffer as cities become less green and much hotter.
Some local councils are more tolerant than others in allowing residents to grow food where they want.
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Melbourne is a product of British colonial planning policies to control public access and movement in Australian cities. This legacy still influences the use of public spaces today.
Can new Metro Mayors save our struggling town centres?
Informed citizens are essential to support good planning and infrastructure decisions. Marginalising urban planning gets us nowhere.
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Urban planners have been blamed for a lot of things, including higher housing costs. But the solution is to refine the process, not sideline the good planning that makes cities safe and liveable.
The original conflict between development and preservation of natural assets is broadening as the risks of climate change become ever more obvious.
Crystal Ja/AAP
Conflicts over coastal areas have largely been between development and preserving what makes these attractive places to live. Rising sea levels are now complicating our relationship with the coast.
Design deficiencies that contribute to conflict in public spaces often start at the edges.
Redesigning spaces of conflict starts with creating life on the edges. Geelong offers contrasting examples of city centre spaces: one with problems inherent in its design and a nearby one that works.
It turns out cul-de-sacs may be better than we realised for creating a safe and inclusive community within a community.
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Understanding what makes a neighbourhood street a good place to live for adults with intellectual disability can help create places that are good for everyone.
A polarising election issue in Western Australia, the Roe 8 project illustrates the need for better and more democratic decision-making.
Gregory Roberts/AAP
One reason Perth’s Roe 8 project is the subject of passionate protests is that it’s a case of a government asserting power over people rather than exercising power with local communities.
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’.
Objects excavated from the ‘fire layer’ beneath London’s streets tell a story of intense heat, fear – and chaos.
The size and pace of activity in Tokyo can be overwhelming, but at the human scale the city has an incredibly rich layering of experiences built over generations.
The concept of living heritage can help us make decisions that go beyond preserving historical facades to protect and add to, rather than freeze, the stories and layers of the past.