News
21 September 2023
On September 20, the Victorian Government released its Housing Statement, outlining a number of large and small changes across the housing sector. From changes to planning laws, to the demolition of public housing towers across Melbourne some of the plans will have significant real-world impacts, but they may not all be beneficial. To better understand […]
News
01 August 2023
Gas connections for all new housing and sub-divisions will be banned in Victoria from January 1 next year, leading to greener, healthier homes.
News
26 July 2023
After Melbourne hosted the 2006 Commonwealth Games, the athlete village in Parkville was largely sold off, with 320 houses going to social housing. Victoria’s now cancelled 2026 Commonwealth Games were meant to have the same effect in the state’s smaller cities.
News
12 July 2023
Australia needs a bold national project to tackle the climate crisis and support households by shifting to a more sustainable housing industry.
News
29 June 2023
On May 10, 2023 the World Green Building Council (WGBC) and its global network launched the Circular Built Environment Playbook — a guide for the building and construction sector to accelerate the adoption of circular economy and resource efficiency principles. This builds upon a series of reports by the Sustainable Buildings and Construction programme (part of UN’s One Planet […]
News
27 June 2023
The findings from academic research are often not easily accessible to research participants and public audiences. This is problematic in areas like climate change research, where research translation and more widespread dissemination of how best to adapt to climate impacts is vitally important given the scale of challenges being faced, and that those most adversely […]
News
01 June 2023
New research into Melburnians’ connection to nature is helping the City of Melbourne understand how to engage its community members in conservation efforts. The study, led by RMIT University in collaboration with the City of Melbourne and Queensland University of Technology, surveyed over 1,500 City of Melbourne residents and visitors on their connection to nature and found […]
News
26 May 2023
Dr Holly Kirk has been awarded an ARC Early Career Industry Fellowships for her project “Spatial planning to implement biodiversity sensitive urban design (BSUD) across scales and contexts”. With growing recognition of the benefits urban nature has for human wellbeing, developers, planners and designers are urgently seeking ways to enhance biodiversity within urban areas. With […]
News
12 May 2023
Sarah Bekessy, RMIT University; Brendan Wintle, The University of Melbourne, and Rachel Morgain, The University of Melbourne The Albanese government has made bold environmental promises over the last year. Given the parlous state of nature in Australia, these commitments are important. The promises include ending new extinctions, fixing national nature laws and protecting 30% of […]
News
10 May 2023
One in four Australian households are finding it hard to pay their gas and electricity bills. As winter looms, energy price rises will make it even harder. Cold homes and disconnections resulting from energy poverty threaten people’s health and wellbeing.
News
21 April 2023
Matthew Selinske, RMIT University; Georgia Garrard, The University of Melbourne; Jaana Dielenberg, Charles Darwin University, and Sarah Bekessy, RMIT University Last month, Sir David Attenborough called on United Kingdom residents to “go wild once per week”. By this, he meant taking actions which help rather than harm the natural world, such as planting wildflowers for […]
News
31 March 2023
Experts are calling for planning policy to ‘unbundle’ parking spaces from apartments to reduce housing costs and alleviate street parking woes.
News
20 March 2023
The harsh realities of managing the waste we produce are in the news: councils shunning new glass bins, more plastic being produced per person in the world and Sydney bins overflowing. And the growth in apartment living in Australia threatens to add to these problems. Apartments worldwide have lower recycling rates than standalone houses. Our […]
News
10 February 2023
A sound concept for affordable housing established early in Ukraine’s recovery process can sustain long lasting economic and social development and also build on Europe’s best practices, the report shows. According to the authors of Ukraine’s housing recovery requires a well-designed capital investment strategy, published by Housing Finance International, future efforts to rebuild the country present the […]
News
17 January 2023
Climate change is going just as badly for cities as we have been warned it would. Extreme weather is increasingly common and severe globally. Australian cities have endured a number of recent disastrous events. It’ll get worse, too. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) factsheet outlining impacts on human settlements is a very sobering […]
News
11 December 2022
Brendan Wintle, The University of Melbourne; Martine Maron, The University of Queensland, and Sarah Bekessy, RMIT University The Albanese government has just released its long-awaited response to a scathing independent review of Australia’s environment protection law. The 2020 review ultimately found the laws were flawed, outdated and, without fundamental reform, would continue to see plants […]
News
06 December 2022
The Solomon Islands has been identified as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, with informal settlements and the urban poor particularly sensitive to weather-related extreme events. A multi-disciplinary scientific team from RMIT University, led by Prof. Darryn McEvoy, is engaged in several projects that aim to increase the climate resilience of marginalised communities in the capital city, Honiara.
News
29 November 2022
New research reveals up to half of Melbourne’s on-street parking spaces could be converted into hectares of new green space, without a net loss of parking for the public.
News
18 November 2022
Marco Amati, RMIT University; Chris De Gruyter, RMIT University, and Salvador Rueda, Instituto de Arquitectura Avanzada de Cataluña (IAAC) For 185 years, Melbourne’s Hoddle Grid – the ordered layout of CBD streets and blocks designed in 1837 – has dictated the flow of people and vehicles in the city centre. But how well does the […]
News
15 November 2022
There are now 8 billion people in the world. Do we have enough food? What does this mean for nature? Are more humans a catastrophe for climate change?
News
20 September 2022
“Work” – broadly defined – is what allows society to function. Like other old certainties, it is under threat from climate change.
News
10 September 2022
Trivess Moore, RMIT University and Nicola Willand, RMIT University The required energy-efficiency rating of new housing in Australia will increase from 6 to 7 stars from October next year. Some claim this will greatly increase housing costs. But is this true? Costs for new home owners are the sum of three things: capital costs to […]
News
23 August 2022
This year the Centre for Urban Research, Urban Futures Enabling Capability Platforms and Social Change Enabling Capability Platform are presenting a number of events as part of Social Sciences Week. With online and in-person events, these sessions look at how social sciences help us make sense of an uncertain future. How to live in a […]
News
28 July 2022
Benjamin Cooke, RMIT University; Aidan Davison, University of Tasmania; Jamie Kirkpatrick, University of Tasmania, and Lilian Pearce, La Trobe University You would have heard Australia’s environment isn’t doing well. A grim story of “crisis and decline” was how Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek described the situation when she launched the State of the Environment Report last […]
