Some critics see high rise living in the CBD as ‘vertical sprawl’, but its sustainability credentials are exemplary, it’s eminently walkable and it helps make housing affordable elsewhere in the metro area

New research on the US suggests high rates of home ownership are associated with high rates of unemployment over the long term. It’s getting a lot of profile but is it convincing?

‘McMansions’ cop some unwarranted criticism, but the claims made by the Institute of Public Affairs’ Chris Berg that they’re a benign mark of economic success don’t stack up.

At the same time as many Australian households live in dwellings larger than they need, others can’t find affordable homes big enough to cope with family life. The average number of bedrooms in our homes has increased over the last 15 to 20 years, yet average household size has declined.  Older Australians in particular are [...]

I think the effectiveness of his proposed regulation on maximum soft drink serving sizes is questionable, but New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is on the right track with his pilot program for micro-apartments in Manhattan. The Mayor is seeking proposals from developers for the construction of an apartment building on city owned land with 75% [...]

According to a report in The Australian last week, the Queensland Housing Minister, Dr Bruce Flegg, is proposing to forcibly move public housing tenants with empty bedrooms into smaller dwellings. Dr Flegg said a Government audit found there are 8,700 public housing units in the State with two or more unoccupied bedrooms. Under-occupancy is the biggest [...]

As the exhibit shows, there’s evidently much more to a country’s level of home ownership than the wealth of its citizens. Germany is one of the richest countries on the list, yet its home ownership rate is 42% compared to 98% in considerably poorer Bulgaria. I’ve taken this data from Wiki, but it’s similar to [...]

My wife and I were both working from home yesterday so we walked approx 1.5 km through suburban streets to our local strip shopping centre for lunch. We’re about 8 km from the Town Hall and live in a street that Walk Score classifies as Somewhat Walkable (65/100). One thing I noticed for the umpteenth time [...]

The exhibit above shows the sort of development planning authorities in our capital cities want to encourage. In this case, the developer, Parkrise Australia, proposes to construct 474 apartments and 11 food and drink establishments at 1091 Plenty Rd Bundoora, just 14 km from the centre of Melbourne. It will replace an existing drive-to restaurant, [...]

High-rise housing gets a pretty bad press in Australia. It’s frequently criticised for over-shadowing, generating high-speed winds, and destroying streetscapes and views. Skyscrapers have high life-cycle emissions compared to medium density housing and in some instances are associated with mental illness and socially dysfunctional behaviours. But it gets worse – some observers reckon it’s an [...]