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.
Blog
04 May 2023
Sharing knowledge for the recovery of Ukraine Executive Summary This executive summary is from full report authored by Oleksandr Anisimov and Pavlo Fedoriv (New Housing Policy, UA), Oleksandra Tkachenko (UNUN), Julie Lawson (RMIT Centre for Urban Research) and Edwin Buitelaar (Utrecht University) and published by PBL, the Dutch government’s National Agency for Environmental Assessment. This […]
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 […]
Blog
08 March 2023
Two new projects led by Dr Lucy Gunn aim to improve our health by understanding the health impacts of our neighbourhoods.
Blog
02 March 2023
Semester 1 began this week at RMIT and to celebrate, Sustainability and Urban Planning hosted a great event to welcome new and returning students and to celebrate the achievements of the 2022 graduating classes.
Blog
28 February 2023
The Forum for Dwelling Justice, held in Naarm (Melbourne) in August 2022, aimed to examine the colonial relations of housing precarity and forge solidarity between sites of resistance. The Forum brought together leaders, activists, community-based practitioners, scholars and film-makers to stage a conversation about precarity, racial violence, incarceration and dispossession and how these dynamics shape […]
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 […]
Blog
14 December 2022
Heat pumps are becoming all the rage around a world that has to slash carbon emissions rapidly while cutting energy costs. In buildings, they replace space heating and water heating – and provide cooling as a bonus.
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 […]
Blog
09 December 2022
On December 1, CUR members and partners gathered to reflect on the impact of the Centre over the past decade and consider the future of urban research.
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?
Blog
07 October 2022
The election of a Labor Government at the 2022 federal election has brought new attention to policies for climate change mitigation and energy transition, with an accelerated minimum target of 43 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 now legislated. Cities and suburbs will be central to achieving the climate target as concentrated sites of […]
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 […]
Blog
06 September 2022
On Friday August 26, the Centre for Urban Research hosted the Forum for Dwelling Justice, at the Capitol Theatre, organised by David Kelly and Libby Porter. The Forum brought together more than 600 scholars, grassroots campaigners, activists, people with lived experience, and practitioners to identify the radical potential for resistance to dispossession, displacement and precarity […]
