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Understanding Victoria’s Housing Statement

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 […]

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Shaping Pacific Urban Futures

12 September 2023

CUR researchers have contributed to sessions on the climate action day at the 6th Pacific Urban Forum, held at the Pacific Island Forum Secretariat Conference Centre in Suva, Fiji (5–7 September). The event was attended by 300 delegates from across the region. The Pacific Urban Forum (PUF) is the premier event for urban practitioners, thinkers, […]

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Five models to de-risking the building industry in Australia – here’s what we can learn from around the world

09 August 2023

The multitude of challenges facing the construction industry in Australia seems to keep accumulating. Supply chain shortages, labour shortages, price increases, insurance and financial difficulties, mental health issues, and gaps in skills and training have variously exacerbated during, or as a result of, the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges not only impact workers within the industry and the ability […]

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Cooking (and heating) without gas: what are the impacts of shifting to all-electric homes?

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.

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Building houses in factories for the Commonwealth Games was meant to help the housing crisis. What now?

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.

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Turning the housing crisis around: how a circular economy can give us affordable, sustainable homes

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.

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Six actions we can take towards closing materials loops in Australian residential construction

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 […]

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Comics to communicate climate risks, vulnerability, and adaptation

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 […]

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Northsiders are more connected to nature than southsiders: study

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 […]

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New ARC project to help plan for urban nature

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 […]

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If the budget ditched the Stage 3 tax cuts, Australia could save every threatened species – and lots more

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 […]

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1 in 4 households struggle to pay power bills. Here are 5 ways to tackle hidden energy poverty

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.

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Rebuilding a place to call home

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 […]

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Nature is in crisis. Here are 10 easy ways you can make a difference

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 […]

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Australians paying $6 billion for unused apartment parking

31 March 2023

Experts are calling for planning policy to ‘unbundle’ parking spaces from apartments to reduce housing costs and alleviate street parking woes.

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We can’t keep putting apartment residents’ waste in the too hard basket

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 […]

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Two new projects to help promote active transport and understand healthy ageing

08 March 2023

Two new projects led by Dr Lucy Gunn aim to improve our health by understanding the health impacts of our neighbourhoods.

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Sustainability and Urban Planning students gather to kick off new year

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.

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Peer-led dwelling justice projects in the colony

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 […]

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Building Ukraine back better requires affordable, inclusive and green housing: report

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 […]

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As heatwaves and floods hit cities worldwide, these places are pioneering solutions

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 […]

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Heat pumps can cut your energy costs by up to 90%. It’s not magic, just a smart use of the laws of physics

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.

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Our laws fail nature. The government’s plan to overhaul them looks good, but crucial detail is yet to come

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 […]

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Urban Research in Transforming Times – 10 Years of the Centre for Urban Research

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.