Work on preparing Melbourne’s new Metropolitan Planning Strategy finally went “live” on the internet yesterday with the curious slogan, A Vision for Victoria. Victoria?! Although officers in the Department of Planning and Community Development (DPCD) have been working away privately for almost a year, this is the public launch of the Strategy. This is, so [...]
It’s long been a commonplace that cities are engines of economic and social development. Spatial proximity is synergistic – it provides economies of scale that extend well beyond a single firm or household. However the “spillover” benefits of living side by side come at a price – the costs are also amplified by proximity. Cities [...]
A new Australian site, Other Cities, has just published a must-read article for anyone interested in cities. It’s an interview with Kevin O’Connor, Professorial Fellow in Urban Planning at the University of Melbourne. This fascinating and insightful interview covers many issues from developer levies to public transport to cars to where university workers live. I [...]
By Alan Davies
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Also posted in Employment
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Tagged centres, developer levies, Employment, Infrastructure, Kevin O'Connor, Melbournea Trobe, Monash, policy, Rowville rail line, sprawl, university
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One of the most persistent ideas I see in urban policy is that the physical environment should be designed to provide more opportunities for casual and random interaction between people who’ve never seen or heard of each other before. The “stranger multiplier” – the concept that accidental contact with complete strangers can significantly increase social [...]
I didn’t know that Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne have the largest concentration of privately funded motorways of any cities in the world until I read this recent paper, How different are Australian cities?. It’s written by Qld academics Glen Searle, Jago Dodson and Wendy Steele and has a few other surprises and curiosities too. The [...]
One of the most enduring and pervasive ideas in urban policy is that cities should consist of numerous self-contained and self-sufficient neighbourhoods. With urban villages anchoring each neighbourhood, residents could work, shop, study and play locally, thereby saving on travel and building a strong sense of neighbourhood community. I’ve long been dubious about this romantic [...]
The New York Times published a fascinating article a few days ago which asked the question: How many people can Manhattan hold? The answer is it depends on the density. If it were packed as densely as the fabled Kowloon Walled City (see first exhibit – click for video), its current 1.6 million resident population [...]
February 27, 2012 – 9:00 pm
A novel that deals with urban design, planning and the establishment of new cities is an unusual beast, but that’s part of what drew me to read the new book by veteran writer Frank Moorhouse, Cold Light. The protagonist, Edith Campbell Berry, works for a time at the body planning the development of Canberra in [...]
By Alan Davies
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Also posted in Books
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Tagged Canberra, Cold Light, Edith trilogy, Frank Moorhouse, Garden City, Grattan Institute, League of Nations, Marion Mahoney Griffin, plannning, Robert Menzies, Walter Burley Griffin
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February 21, 2012 – 7:50 pm
If people know only one thing about Jane Jacobs, it’s usually the phrase “eyes on the street”. She coined it to describe the idea that streets with plenty of activity and, most of all, custodians who care about what goes on in them, will be safe and secure streets. Jacob’s key objective in her famous [...]
February 20, 2012 – 6:44 pm
Urbanists throughout Australia and the world were startled and amazed to read of the radical 20-50 year vision for expanding Melbourne’s CBD proposed last week by Victoria’s Planning Minister, Matthew Guy. According to the Herald Sun, which headlined its story Mega Melbourne plan for skyscrapers in suburbs, Mr Guy’s plan will “see skyscrapers stretching from [...]
