September 27, 2010 – 7:05 pm
The peak industry body, Tourism and Transport Forum Australia, got itself into hot water with the media last week. The Forum suggested in a new report, Meeting the funding challenges of public transport, that eligibility for concession fares should be drastically restricted. The brouhaha was unfortunate because the Forum’s underlying contention – that public transport [...]
September 25, 2010 – 7:48 pm
Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, Canadian-American architect Witold Rybczynski, has this interesting slide show at Slate titled Ordinary Places. He subtitles it “rediscovering the parking lot, the big-box store, the farmers market, the gas Station” and observes: At first glance, the big-box store doesn’t foster sociability. The no-frills environment sends the message [...]
September 23, 2010 – 7:03 pm
I’m currently reading a new book by writer and journalist Jenny Sinclair, When we think about Melbourne: the imagination of a city. This fascinating book sets out to discover what makes Melbourne unique and, according to the cover blurb, ultimately concludes that it’s all in our collective imagination. I’m only a little way into the [...]
September 22, 2010 – 7:50 pm
The Victorian Employer’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VECCI) reckons bicycles should be registered and cyclists licensed. VECCI’s recently released Infrastructure and Liveability policy paper, which is intended to influence public debate in the lead up to this year’s state election, argues that “road users should be treated equally. For example, all road users, including [...]
September 21, 2010 – 7:48 pm
There are many misconceptions about the suburbs. A common one is that they are dormitories for workers who commute to the CBD. Another is that jobs in the suburbs are mostly low skill and low pay. The reality is most economic activity in our capital cities takes place in the suburbs. In Melbourne, for example, [...]
September 20, 2010 – 7:05 pm
The American modernist architect, Richard Neutra, is supposed to have once claimed that if he were so minded, he could design a house for a happily married couple that would assure their divorce within six months. Or something like that. While it’s possibly apocryphal, the story illustrates what many architects and urban designers think – [...]
September 18, 2010 – 7:14 pm
There’s a long history of rent-seeking in Australia over major projects. Business puts a lot of effort into lobbying government and the media to subsidise projects the private sector wouldn’t otherwise touch with a bargepole. So when IPA (Infrastructure Partnerships Australia) – the nation’s peak infrastructure lobby group – releases a new study calling for [...]
September 16, 2010 – 7:05 pm
The Victorian Employer’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VECCI) released five policy papers on Monday aimed at guiding the pre-election decision-making of the major parties. The paper on Infrastructure and Liveability is of particular interest to the Melbourne Urbanist. Apart from a short introduction emphasising the economic importance of infrastructure, it’s essentially a list of [...]
September 15, 2010 – 8:01 pm
Earlier in the week I argued that public policy needs to recognise that climate change and peak oil are the least compelling reasons for investing in public transport (Public transport: time for a new paradigm?). There are far more convincing reasons, I argued, such as providing universal mobility and an alternative in congested conditions. One [...]
September 14, 2010 – 8:48 pm
There’s been a massive shitstorm in the blogosphere since a left-leaning Melbourne lawyer, Legal Eagle, outed herself as a climate change skeptic on the SkeptiClawyer blog last week (Climate change, scepticism and elitism). Legal Eagle also appeared on SBS’s Insight program a week ago when eminent climate change scientist, Stanford University’s Professor Stephen Schneider, was [...]
