Blog

New Zealand rushes in on upzoning where Australia fears to tread

12 November 2021

Australian planners and economists are currently debating the role of planning policies and regulations in dwelling production as part of the federal parliamentary inquiry into housing supply. Meanwhile the New Zealand government has announced it intends to dramatically roll back residential zoning across the country’s major cities in response to high house prices. This simplistic policy poses risks for strategic metropolitan planning and Australia should pay attention.

News

Seven ways the 1969 Transportation Plan shaped Melbourne

12 December 2019

December 12 2019 marks 50 years since the landmark 1969 Transportation Plan. Here, we take a look back on the plan that brought Melbourne its network of freeways and roads, and how its legacy stacks up in 2019.

Past Events

Planning Healthy Cities: A Conversation with Planners, Scholars & Industry

14 August 2019, 4:30PM-7:00PM

How can we deliver improved health outcomes through best practice urban planning processes and policies?

Blog

Living ‘liveable’: this is what residents have to say about life on the urban fringe

20 February 2019

Recent studies show Melbourne’s and Sydney’s fast-growing outer suburbs lag behind other parts of the city in access to urban design, employment and amenities and services that foster liveability.

News

The evolution of metropolitan planning

18 May 2018

If one were to conduct an opinion poll among all the urban planners currently employed by local government authorities across metropolitan Melbourne with regard to the issue of state government regulation and interference, one might be reasonably safe to assert that the survey response would be ‘there is too much.’

News

Indigenous people and planning: How Australian planning practice has miserably failed

23 May 2017

While planning is undoubtedly important in creating better places for people, the connection between people and place, for Indigenous people globally, in all their diversity, is even more profound and central to everyday life.

Blog

Done like a chicken dinner: city fringes locked in battles over broiler farms

07 March 2016

Since 1965 the per-capita annual consumption of chicken meat in Australia has increased ten-fold from 4.6 kilograms per person in 1965 to 44.6 kilograms in 2012.

Blog

‘Not a lot of people read the stuff’: how planning defies good theory

09 March 2015

Research into the way cities do – or do not – work can make a critical contribution to urban policy and practice.