18 Results

A diverse collection of links including women in the windows of Manhattan in 1960, street grids are for squares, what other cities look like when viewed the prism of yours, and more….

We’re increasingly being told we need higher job densities in our cities to exploit ‘agglomeration economies’ associated with the ‘knowledge economy’. But are the benefits exaggerated?

The latest release of the American Community Survey provides a reminder of the enormity of the task of shifting commuters into more sustainable modes. Transit’s mode share barely moved over the last 11 years despite large investment in new systems.

The Grattan Institute released a new report earlier this month, Building tomorrow’s suburbs, on how to make fringe suburbs more adaptable to future change.

According to Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, “almost nothing signifies progress more than new roads.” That line is from the speech he gave to the Federal Council of the Liberal Party on Saturday when he announced the Coalition’s Plan to Reduce Traffic Congestion. The Coalition’s Plan comprises a $4 billion commitment to accelerate construction of [...]

Whatever misgivings I’ve had about some other reports by the Grattan Institute, the latest one demonstrates the value of the Melbourne-based think tank. Game changers: economic reform priorities for Australia seeks to identify those workable economic reforms that would produce the greatest benefits for the nation by 2022. It proposes three: Broaden the GST to [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

There’re some interesting takeaways from the latest ABS estimates of population growth released last week. You can get a broad overview from demographer Bernard Salt’s analysis, but I think there’re a few other points pertinent to cities that warrant examination. For a start, I expect many will be surprised at how small a proportion of each [...]

The Grattan Institute released a new report, Social Cities, under its Cities Program this week. The report addresses “worrying signs that isolation and loneliness are increasing in Australia”. The data shows, it says, “that people’s friendships and neighbourhood connections have diminished over the past two decades”. Notwithstanding the title, the report only addresses city design. [...]