Our cities are getting hotter, more crowded and noisier. Climate change is bringing more heatwaves, placing pressure on human health, urban amenity, productivity and infrastructure. Urban residents naturally want to…
Five ways to reduce your eco-footprint this Christmas
Our impact on the environment might not be at the forefront of our minds during the rush of the Christmas festive season. We might be far more worried about our…
Giving a crap: Sanitation a basic function but a complex issue
In most situations and places, toilets and defecation are taboo topics for discussion. They are at the bottom of the list of topics for dinner table conversations. Yet 2.4 billion…
Securing Australia’s food & water systems
Understanding and addressing environmental and social risks Australians share a deep relationship with our land and water, one that includes Indigenous connections to country, cultural associations that derive from a history…
Rethinking social housing
The Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre (SBEnrc) project:Rethinking Social Housing: Effective, Efficient, Equitable is developing the E6 Strategic Evaluation Framework for social housing delivery that can be used by policy…
The way we fund Australian transport projects is nonsensical
Dr Matthew Burke is deputy director and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the Urban Research Program. His research is mainly in how transport systems, land uses and travel…
Eats, shoots and leaves: what the movie industry does to ‘location’
The motion picture industry has come a long way since the silent movies of yesteryear. The use of CGI and special effects capture our imaginations, but have these reduced the…
Car park of the future, today
Griffith University has once again cemented itself as a leader in appealing design and innovative sustainability features with the unveiling of its new $23.3 million multistorey car park. Officially opening…
Rethinking Social Housing
Why do we need a house? It beats sleeping in the street. Yes, but it also means we are healthier so we need less hospital and medical care; it means…
What has happened to the Australian backyard?
Up until the end of the 1980s, nearly all suburban houses in Australia had large backyards by world standards. The older type of suburban form is still characterised by backyards…