The Australian government has allocated $50 million for the Smarter Cities and Suburbs Program to encourage projects that “improve the livability, productivity and sustainability of cities and towns across Australia”. Mark Sawyer, lecturer in Architecture, University of Western Australia, takes a look at the environmental costs of smart cities. One project funded under the program […]
A unique opportunity exists for infrastructure investment in Australia as transport as we know it faces disruption from autonomous vehicles, says Peter Newman Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University. Disruption is not a dirty word. Traditional transport models are being transformed for the better by savvy young upstarts: the taxi industry by Uber, for instance, and even […]
According to the latest UN projections, the world’s population is set to grow by 2.9 billion – that’s the equivalent of two more African continents – in the next 33 years. By that time, it’s expected that humans will have developed into an almost exclusively urban species with 80-90 percent of people living in cities. […]
"I think across the world, whether in Australia, Shenzhen or Songdo, city makers are in danger of fetishising the power of technology and infrastructure to create the most efficient and effective human service environments, ultimately losing sight of what cities are all about: the experiences of people being people."