May, 2010

I noted on Friday that the 2010 Mercer annual quality of living survey says Sydney is more liveable than Melbourne. However neither of these surveys define what liveability is from the point of view of the residents of a city, begging the question: what makes one city more liveable than another? And in particular, which [...]

I love Russian railway stations. The TimesOnline reports ”the opening of a Moscow Metro station named after Fyodor Dostoevsky has been postponed after complaints that murals decorating the platform walls are too depressing. The images, drawn from the 19th-century novelist’s works, could prompt depressed commuters to kill themselves, critics say. “One scene, right, depicts a man [...]

On Wednesday the Sydney Morning Herald reported the release of the 2010 Mercer annual quality of living survey with the headline, “Sydney beats Melbourne in world’s top cities league”. This is not news. Sydney beat Melbourne in the 2009 Mercer survey too. Sydney has stayed in 10th position and Melbourne has “slipped” from 17th to [...]

Imagine you’ve just been elected Premier. You carried the electorate on a simple but radical two-promise platform: (1) to prohibit alcohol and (2) to shift all travel out of cars and onto public transport. The Party is solidly behind you. Members agree that both alcohol and cars are bad for the individual and bad for [...]

The idea of very fast trains on the Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne corridor seems to have run out of steam after an initial flurry earlier this year when the CRC for Rail Innovation and the Greens both called on the Federal Government to fund a major concept study. There has been very little in the popular media since [...]

Yes! Compared to Sydney, you get 11 km closer to the city centre in Melbourne and pay $70,000 less! The Financial Review ran an interesting article on Saturday titled Only units deliver median inner glow. It’s paywalled, but I’ve made two graphs (click to enlarge) based on information it presents in a table on house and [...]

My household acquired the new Border’s e-reader, Kobo, on the weekend. The Kobo was released on Wednesday and with the dollar crashing to below 80c at one point on Friday I figured it might be now or never. There’s no particular connection to Melbourne or to urbanism in this article but as this is the [...]

And they say strategic planning is not about barking dogs (Local Government Boundaries, Melbourne)! This really needs a caption….

David Byrne on bicycles, Atlanta’s sprawl and burying highways. On New York: “If I had a magic wand — ahhh, that’s easy — I’d bury the highways, as they’ve done in some other cities. The West Side Highway and the FDR would both go underground, with parks on top that link the city and its [...]

The proportion of new dwelling commencements planned for the outer suburban growth areas increased sharply between the release of Melbourne 2030 in 2003 and the release of the revised strategy, Melbourne @ 5 Million, in October 2008. Melbourne 2030 envisaged 31% of dwelling starts would be located in the growth areas over the period to [...]